


The Driven

by libertyelyot



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Angst, Dark Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:04:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libertyelyot/pseuds/libertyelyot
Summary: While recovering from TB in an Essex convalescent home, a lost girl meets a man in the throes of resurrection.*Spoilers for Season 5, eventually*





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, what do you know, watching Season 5 compelled me to write another story. This came to me as I lay awake at 2.30 a.m. the other night. By 5.30, it was all plotted out and mentally written, re-written and edited. I hope you like.

Mrs Harrison had mislaid her ear trumpet again, which was as good a pretext as any to step outside the stifling day room and escape into the labyrinthine innards of the convalescent home.

“No, don’t trouble, I think I saw it on the hall table,” I said to whichever of the overworked nursing staff had raised the alarm. In truth, I had no idea where the errant ear trumpet might be located, but I could not bear to spend another minute in that oppressive room, with its smell of lye soap and rancid vegetable matter.

On my third day in this place, I still had very little idea of its arcane geography. In seeking the library, for a stolen half-hour of blessed solitude, I found myself instead at the end of a narrow passage leading out on to the rear patio and the grounds beyond.

Opening the little door, I stood there for a moment, taking in the mild, sweet air, looking across the verdant lawns that swept down to woodland and the lake beyond. I so wanted to see the lake, but thus far the nurses had only allowed me a slow perambulation of the kitchen garden at the side of the house, with frequent rest stops at every one of the stone benches we passed.

When I was stronger, they had promised I could go further. I took an experimental breath. There was only a little wheezing. I was sure I was much better than they thought me, after all.

But it was afternoon now, which meant that the male patients had the run of the grounds. We ladies had had our chance before luncheon. All the same, the lawns were very sparsely populated. I spotted one very elderly gent using a walking frame at the far edge, trailed by a nurse. Apart from him, I saw three younger men, sitting on a bench together in the rose garden, laughing and coughing. I think one of them was smoking, which was surely not permitted, although perhaps he was one of the few non-tuberculous cases among us. There were a handful of these, I had been told.

I put a slippered foot out of doors, looking each way to make sure I was not observed. The scent of the newly-mown grass rose to my nostrils, rich and alluring. The sun warmed my skin, where the fringes of my wrap left it uncovered.

Hang it all. The morning had been cloudy and shiverish. I needed to bathe in this light and freshness, while I had the chance. I launched myself off from the patio and began to walk down the sloping lawn, towards the woodland. I was going to see that lake.

The whisper of wind in the trees grew louder as I approached the copse, interspersed with the wistful bubbling of birdsong. The honeyed warmth of the lawn gave way to shadowy coolness, sometimes emerging into dappled shade or occasional patches of full sunlight. The deliciously rank odour of wild garlic, something I had forgotten all about, wafted up from the stalks that brushed my legs. Was it so long since I was in a wood? I tried to remember.

Epping Forest, when I was fourteen. Bluebells. A gipsy encampment. I had grabbed Joan’s hand and we had run away, giggling. Mother had whipped us for getting dirt on our pinafores.

Ten years since, and now both Mother and Joan were gone from this world.

There were no bluebells in this wood, for the season was too advanced, and no gipsy encampment either. Still, some things remained familiar. The rake of a bramble across my hand, the pungency of old leaf mulch, the strange stillness in a place of such determined life.

My lungs began to ache and misgivings dampened my adventurous spirit. What if I should need to take a long rest, here in this deserted place, and then found myself unable to climb the slope back to the house? Perhaps I should turn back now.

But the sound of a splash, very near, made my heart jump, replacing the discomfort in my lungs. Was it some kind of large fish? Or even an otter, or some other large animal, swimming so close by? The lake had to be within a few feet of me. The chance to dip my toes into a ripple of sun heated water was too good to pass up.

Sure enough, once I was through the next thicket, the lake waters lapped just a few paces away from me, fringed by deep green reeds. Their lazy stillness was churned up some yards out by…

Heavens! A swimmer, a human swimmer. A man.

I stepped quickly back, concealing myself beneath the cloak of a weeping willow. For some moments, I saw only a faceless bobbing head and a pair of arms powering through the water until he tired and rose up on his feet, wading towards a shore not far from my little spot.

He was chest deep at first, but he moved easily against the water’s weight. He was certainly not one of the consumptive youths I had seen in the dining hall; indeed, I had not seen him before at all. I am sure I should have remembered such a figure as this. He strode through the lake like a vengeful god, bearded and broad-shouldered. With each pace, a little more of his body became uncovered, the water falling away like a veil.

My mother’s voice came, unwelcome, into my head. _Your lascivious eye will be the ruination of you, madam. I have seen the way you look at the men in the street. Satan will find his way between your legs, mark my words._

So far, Satan had not found his way between my legs, and neither had anybody else, but I began to fear that mother was right about my lascivious eye. It could not tear itself from the body of this strange man, fascinated by the strength and damage it found there.

For every curve of muscle, there seemed to be an answering scar; for every pleasing sinew, a mark of suffering. As he came closer, his face sharpened, showing signs of some bitter agony that would never leave him, although one could not possibly know its nature.

I cowered in my weeping willow hidey-hole, feeling a prickle of fear along with the obscure compassion his condition aroused in me. I should not care for him to find me here.

Soon enough, he was close to the shore, and that part of a man no decent woman was supposed to look upon came into evidence. I opened my eyes especially wide, waiting for lightning to strike me down, but the sun shone on and the world continued in its rotation.

His legs appeared finally and, now he was out of the water’s embrace, it was clear that he walked with a strange sort of limp, although it did not seem to be caused by an evident leg injury. Rather, he had to put out his arms a little to steady himself as he gained the shore, and got up on to the bank by moving on to all fours rather than taking a high step out.

I wondered, as I watched him, what was the nature of his illness. He was a man who must once have been extraordinarily finely made, but had been battered into a hollow version of his former self. Perhaps, I surmised, a soldier.

A little pile of clothes stood near him, and I expected him to put them on, but instead he donned only a pair of long johns and then he pulled himself back into an upright position using the trunk of a tree until he was able to grip an overhanging branch with both hands. He then proceeded to pull himself up, his feet leaving the ground, many times in rapid succession.

This undertaking looked both strenuous and rather painful, but he worked doggedly on, ignoring the building sweat on his brow and the gritted teeth that told of Herculean effort. Eventually, with an anguished grunt, he dropped to the ground.

I watched him there, recovering his breathing and his composure, my lascivious eye having overtaken every other impulse in my being for that time. He was like some beast or spirit of the woods – human only in the particularity of his form. In his eyes, he was wilder than any man I had ever looked upon.

On his back, high up towards his shoulder, were thick black marks in some unfamiliar eastern script I took to be Chinese or Japanese. Perhaps, then, a sailor?

Apparently undefeated, he scrabbled once more to his feet, where he stood for some time, his arms out to either side until he appeared to be satisfied. He commenced then to lash out at the defenceless air, jabbing at some invisible opponent with fists clenched tight. Whomever that invisible opponent might have been, I pitied him, for the blows rained down hard and fast and with an impact I shivered to imagine.

Cloaked in that hidden place, I felt as if I had been transplanted to the middle of some olden tale. There was something of enchantment in the scene, by virtue of its very peculiarity, and in the sylvan surroundings, and most of all in the figure of the shadow-boxing man. Such ferocity in the midst of such tranquillity made for a confounding combination.

Suddenly, his face twisted and, bellowing violent curses, he fell heavily sideways on to the ground. I lurched forward from my hiding place, alarmed at his distress.

While he reached, desperately and futilely, for a long walking cane deposited beside his clothing pile, I hastened along the bank towards him.

“Oh, sir, are you hurt?” I called. “I can go to the house and fetch help…”

I pulled up, a couple of yards from him, stopped in my tracks by the look he turned on me. If sheer ocular malevolence had magical properties, I should then by all rights have been no more than a heap of ashes in the grass.

“Away with you,” he snarled. “Get away, do you hear?”

His fingers closed around the striven-for walking cane and he brandished it towards me. I jumped back, my heart in thunderous gallop.

“I am sorry,” I stammered. “I thought only to…forgive me.”

There was no more to be said to this mask of hostility. I turned and fled through the wood, heedless of the brambles and nettles that might have impeded my progress. It was not until I was halfway up the lawn slope that I remembered I should not have been able to run at all.


	2. Chapter 2

The nurse I liked best was a sweet-faced girl with a conscientious manner and a Lancashire brogue. Her name was Daisy, and I was pleased when she came in to see me on her afternoon rounds.

“Daisy,” I said, as she measured my pulse. “Do you ever work with the male patients?”

“I work wherever I’m put,” she said with her usual good humour. “And I’ve a bone to pick with you, Miss. I heard you’d been wearing yourself out running about on the lawn. Is that the truth?”

“I thought I might try some brisker exercise,” I said, trying to conceal my agitation at the memory.

“Well, you wait until the physician advises it before you push yourself in that direction again, or you’ll find yourself back in the hospital.”

“I know,” I said, penitent. “It was not a good idea.”

“You’ve to let us take care of you,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. And what’s all this talk about the men? Don’t tell me you’ve got an eye for one of them.”

She smiled with complicit expectation.

“No, no, indeed. But I was watching one from the window earlier, and his demeanour made me curious.”

“Demeanour?” She sat back, grinning. “I’m afraid all the long words I know are medical. What did he look like?”

“The wrath of God,” I said, almost to myself, and she fell about laughing.

“Oh my! The wrath of God. So, so funny, but I know exactly who you mean just from that.”

“Do you? A bearded man, above the middle height, perhaps in his forties or thereabouts?”

“Yes, yes,” she laughed some more, then shook her head, smiling at me. “That’ll be Inspector Shine, that will.”

“Inspector? Why, what manner of a title is that?”

“He was a policeman, I’m told. He was the chief of a station, in the dockyards of East London.”

“Oh, a policeman. And what happened to him? Was he attacked in the course of his duty?”

“No, it was a boxing match. He got such a blow to the head that he was in a coma for weeks, and then they thought he would never see again, but he recovered his sight a few months back, and the doctors think he might get well enough to leave here one day, although he’ll always need to use a walking stick for his balance. But I shouldn’t really be telling you this. It’s confidential. Oh, I wish I hadn’t said anything now.”

Poor Daisy looked so miserable at her dereliction of professional duty that I felt guilty for asking.

“Of course I will not tell. I will forget the information immediately.”

“Oh, will you, Miss? I wouldn’t have said anything, but I know you’re not the sort that would gossip, so…”

“It is already forgotten. I can’t even recall the man’s name.”

“Shine,” she said helpfully, then she put a hand over her mouth, giggling. “Oops.”

After she had left, I turned over this new intelligence in my mind. I was almost disappointed that he was not a sailor, for my imagination had christened him Sinbad, and I was his Sheherazade, weaving a thousand tales to explain what had befallen him. Though why I should care a jot, I did not know. He was not a handsome man, though he may once have been, and he was certainly not a pleasant one.

I suppose I was simply in the habit of building stories around everything and everyone I saw. In the many years I’d spent locked in the back room at home, I’d had precious little else to do. But I’d had my story books. Even Mother had allowed me those.

He was not in the dining hall at supper time, and I did not see him the next day either. My mind’s eye would not leave him alone, though – at the oddest moments, I would begin to review that vision of him rising from the waters, the sunlight falling on his shoulders, his taut musculature, his molten eyes. It was a sight I should probably never see again, but I was glad I had seen it at least once.

It lodged in my consciousness and remained close to the forefront, in the absence of any other stimulation, for indeed, this place was dull. Oh, a wonderful place if you liked to sit and sew, but I did not, and once I had read the half-dozen books that were new to me here, I had no other occupation.

“Never mind, Miss Carlton,” said Daisy, looking at the puzzle I had left half-made. “Tonight we’ll have some larks.”

“Will we? How so?”

“It’s the mixer. One evening a week, all the patients get together in the big drawing room and we have music and cards and even dancing for anyone up to it. Regular little soirée, it is, if you want to be grand about it.”

“Oh, that sounds jolly. I do like music.”

“Do you sing or play yourself?”

“I used to like singing, but I cannot at the moment…”

“Oh no, there’s not many up to it here. One lady we had, though, getting over a carriage accident, sung like a bird. Lovely voice, she had. Some of the gents try a comic song now and again, but, like you say, you need the breath in your body. I’ll never forget the lad who tried to do the Major General’s song from _Pirates_. He went purple and nearly keeled over in the middle of the second verse. We’ve some very good pianists, though, and a violinist and an old gent who plays the harmonica.”

“I shall look forward to it greatly. Must we dress up?”

“Most do, after their fashion. There’s no need, though, if you’d rather not.”

“Oh, I rather think I will,” I said, not that I had much. Mother had not approved of finery. But I had a plain silk gown in a shade of green that brought out my eyes and flattered my pale skin, last worn at a family wedding four years since. It would feel good to wear it again, I thought.

Yes, it felt very good, when I put it on and buttoned it and added the few plain pieces of jewellery I possessed, even though it hung on me rather, showing how my illness had wasted me. The air of carnival and escape from my sequestered reality coated it, adding a little magic to my mood.

“I should be in deep mourning,” I said to my reflection in the mirror, “but I will not wear black ever again. I have you to thank for that, dear Mother.” I blew a bitter kiss at my reflection and left the room.

The drawing room was bustling, in a languid sort of way. At the piano, a lady in a feathered bonnet was playing Sir Roger de Coverley, her feathers bobbing to the music. As yet, nobody was dancing – perhaps it was too early – but a row of listeners nearest the instrument clapped along and tapped their feet.

Card tables were dotted about, with players huddled over them, whilst others simply sat together and talked in mixed groups, enjoying the opportunity of companionship with the opposite sex.

“I say.” A chinless young man in a hideous cravat tapped my shoulder. “You’re new here, I think.”

“Yes, this is my fifth day.”

“I thought so. I always keep an eye out for new blood. Lawrence Muldoon, at your service.”

He thrust out his hand, expecting mine. I gave it unwillingly, and he raised it to his lips, leaving it there until a snail trail of saliva chilled my knuckles.

“And you are?” he asked, releasing me at last. I wondered if it would be bad manners to wipe my fingers with my handkerchief. Regrettably, it probably would.

“Oh. Eve Carlton.”

“And what’s your ailment? Sixpence says consumption. It’s nearly always consumption.”

“Well, yes.”

“One can always tell. The pallor, you know, and the bright eyes. Not unattractive on a girl, though for us fellows it’s rather a bore. Not that I’m consumptive myself. I have a different species of lung disorder – the quacks are jiggered if they can diagnose me. It all started a few years ago, when…”

Oh Lord. My eyes darted this way and that, in search of escape, but no obvious opportunity presented itself. I was going to be stuck here listening to this presumptuous bore until, with luck, his lungs gave out and speech became impossible. Optimistic that this might be soon, I nonetheless prepared myself for a long feat of aural endurance, smiling and nodding while my mind drifted off into its own place of refuge.

“…and then, after almost three months of perfect health, I found myself…”

“Spare the poor girl’s ears, Muldoon.” A gruff voice spoke from behind my shoulder, a voice I had heard before. Looking towards it, I was confronted once more with the man in the lake.

“Mr Shine,” said Muldoon, gasping slightly and stepping back. “She’s new here – I merely…”

“You can merely shove off and leave her be,” suggested Shine forcefully. Without meeting my eyes he turned and limped off towards the French doors that gave on to the patio.

Muldoon muttered something inaudible and darted off.

I stood trying to gather myself. The sudden appearance of Shine had had an extraordinary effect upon me, combining dreadful awkwardness and embarrassment with a kind of excitement I was ill-placed to define. A kind of _flutter_. What on earth was it?

Seized by the absolute conviction that I must speak to him, I made my own way to the patio doors. He had rescued me from Muldoon – I should at least thank him for that. And perhaps offer some kind of apology or explanation for what had happened by the lake… although I could not begin to form it in my mind.

I had to wait until nobody observed me before I could slip outside, for the night air was considered hazardous to such cases as mine. I managed it within a few minutes and found him leaning against a stone jardiniere, smoking and gazing out to the shadowy woods.

He must have heard my approach, but he did not stir.

I cleared my throat.

“Inspector…”

He made no move to turn towards me, but he took the cigar from his lips and exhaled a long column of smoke.

“I thought you lung cases were confined to barracks of nights,” he said.

“I wanted to thank you, for delivering me from that awful man.”

“Muldoon’s not so bad,” he said. “In very small doses.”

“I was already on the path to fatal overdose, I’m afraid.”

Shine smirked a little, and finally graced me with a look. His eyes were milder than they had been at the lake, but my cheeks still burned underneath them.

“He is easy enough to avoid,” he said. “You can hear that wheeze half a mile away.”

I tried a smile back at him. My lips seemed to wobble in the attempt.

“Eve Carlton,” I said, putting out a tentative hand.

He dropped his cigar butt and crushed it beneath his heel.

“I am Jedediah Shine,” he said, failing to take my hand. Looking away from me, he muttered,“Or I was.”

That _sotto voce_ aside pierced me, lending me the courage to continue.

“You were a policeman, I have heard.”

He sighed heavily.

“You should get back inside,” he said. “Before they come looking for you.”

“No, I…I want to ask you something. Please.”

His eyes met mine again, stony this time.

“I have not come out here in search of society,” he said. “I have made it clear enough that I prefer my own company, I trust.”

“I’m sorry, but I must ask you. Will you teach me to fight?”

He let out an involuntary snort of laughter, eyeing me with some incredulity.

“You are a girl,” he said.

“Thank you, I am aware of that.”

He seemed to appreciate my sardonic tone, his expression softening slightly.

“And a slip of a thing, too,” he said. “Gust of wind could puff you away.”

“Which makes my need all the more compelling,” I said. I moved closer to him, lowering my voice, adding urgency to my tone. “Mr Shine, all my life I have been knocked down and crushed by those stronger than myself. I have never had the will or the courage to stand and fight them. When I leave this place, I must face the world alone, a young woman, a ‘slip of a thing’, as you say, and the prospect is terrifying to me. If I am to survive, I must have something of that determination, that power, that will to overcome all obstacles, that I observed in you at the lake. If you can teach me just a little of that, then there may be some hope for me yet…” I broke off, breathless, to put a hand to my heaving chest.

I could not look up at him, but I sensed the force of his attention and I clung to it in my mind. I had stirred him, I was sure of it. I was no longer a joke to him.

“Well, Miss Carlton,” he said eventually. “There is more life in you than I thought. If you are serious…”

“I am serious,” I said fervently. Now that I had voiced the thought, it had taken possession of me. What I had said was true. I needed to learn to fight.

“I will need to consider it,” he said.

“That is all I ask.”

He nodded, and the patio doors opened, disgorging a jumble of fiddle music and stamping feet and quavering singing.

“What _ever_ are you doing out here, Miss Carlton? You will catch your death. Come inside at once.”

The matron cast an unfriendly look at Inspector Shine as she beckoned me to her.

“Goodbye,” I whispered, and left him there, fumbling in his pockets for more smoking materials while the doors closed behind us and cast him into solitude once more.


	3. Chapter 3

“What can you possibly want with Mr Shine?”

The matron’s furious whisper was only just audible over the hammering polka and the thump of feet on the wooden floor.

“Nothing. I just felt the need for some air.”

“You know the rules. And you should steer clear of that man. Nothing but trouble since the day he got here, and I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him, which is no distance at all.”

“He just happened to be out there, that is all,” I said, but I was all over hot and cold with the talk of him and wanted nothing more than to escape it. “I am a little tired, perhaps I will retire now.”

The appeal of the music had flown from my soul. I was good only for lying on my bed, steadying my breathing and thinking about Jedediah Shine and the startling – even to me – proposition I had put to him.

The disappointment I would feel if he rejected it seemed no larger than the terror if he accepted. However, he would surely think better of it. Surely.

I slept but little that night, and the next morning I took breakfast in my room, thinking to catch up on the rest I had missed. However, Daisy brought more than my breakfast tray with her.

“A note for you,” she said. “You must have captured a heart at the mixer last night. Lawrence Muldoon? He seemed rather taken.”

I took the note from her and put it aside unopened. My fingers were trembling too much, my presentiment of whom the sender might be overwhelming me.

“Don’t you want to know who it is from?”

“Do you not know?”

“It was in your pigeonhole in the hall – I just thought I’d bring it with me. And since there’s no stamp and no address, it must be from somebody here.”

“Well, it is probably Lawrence Muldoon, and since I do not care for him, I am in no hurry to read it,” I said, with as casual an air as I could muster. “I am much more interested in these eggs. Thank you, Daisy.”

But when Daisy left, the eggs held no attraction for me at all; indeed, the thought of them made me a little nauseous.

I ripped the envelope open and found just two short lines with a scrawled signature of which only the large capital S was legible.

“ _Meet me by the lake at 11. You know the spot._ ”

Eleven? It was already half past nine. And perhaps a hearty breakfast was in order after all. I forced the eggs down, with a little bread and butter and tea, and rose from my bed, eager to make my preparations.

First among my challenges was finding a way to elude the nurses, who would insist on accompanying my morning exercise.

I managed to shake them off by pretending to go inside for a wrap, leaving them in the rose garden while I took an unregarded side path down to the woods. It was far too hot for a wrap anyway, as they had pointed out, the sun beating down today as if it meant to parch the earth out of existence.

It was a relief to slip into the calming shade of the wood, although the air was still thick, and pushing through the twigs and leaves made me feel scratched and sweaty and in need of a long bath. By the time I reached the lake, I would look a perfect fright, which perturbed me much more than it should have done.

I found the right spot with a little difficulty, having approached it via a different route, but at last I saw the sun flashing diamonds off the lake’s surface, and Jedediah Shine sitting on a tree stump in shirtsleeves, whittling at a piece of wood for occupation.

For a long moment, I thought of turning back. To approach him seemed a feat of more daring than I possessed. I stood and watched him work, taking in his flexing forearms below rolled-up shirtsleeves, his strong, capable hands.

“So then,” he said, without looking up. “You are here, after all.”

My options narrowed. Of course, he would have heard me, crackling through the undergrowth.

“Am I late?” I asked, coming unwillingly forward on to the mossy bank. “It took some ingenuity to remove myself from the all-seeing eyes of the nurses.”

He gave me a half-smile, putting down his knife and stick and placing his hands on his knees.

“Ingenuity is all very well, but you have shown more, which is a sense of purpose. Perhaps I was mistaken in doubting you.”

“You doubt me?”

I stood before him, thinking that he was probably right to do so. I was a draggled, milk-white waif whom not even the most imaginative could cast in the role of fighter. How was I to expect him to take me?

He shook his head.

“You shouldn’t care what I think of you. Somebody who lets such a flimsy thing as an opinion stand in their way will never get anywhere in this reeking world.”

I blinked at him. This was an alien way to thinking to me, who had lived twenty four years striving after the unwinnable approval of other people.

“I wonder that are you able to be here at this time,” I said. “Men do not go out until the afternoon, as a rule.”

“As a rule,” he echoed with a sneer. “A rule made for the sake of their convenience, not ours. I choose not to be bound by it.”

“Does nobody try to stop you?”

“I have brought down some of the most vicious malefactors in the city. Do you think a few nurses can compare? That matron, mind you…” He clapped his hands down once more on his knees. “Well, then, I did not think our purpose in meeting here was the exchange of pleasantries. Come closer.”

With some reluctance, I brought myself into his compass, seeing him close up for the first time in daylight. I had not noticed before the livid scarring around his right eye, nor their colour: a vivid, glassy green.

He reached out towards me, and I flinched, but all he did was take some leafy twig matter from my hair, brushing it gently clear. I felt an urge to step back, but I fought it, standing my ground. I think he noticed this little piece of inner conflict, because he smiled with quiet approval before frowning at me.

“I was very close to turning you down,” he said. “For one thing, your state of health puts the kybosh on anything too strenuous. For another, I do not know how your…” He paused, making a gesture in the air with his hands that described an exaggerated female form – although nothing like the one I possessed. “Well, it cannot be put more delicately, your sex…might influence what you can do.”

“Oh, do not mistake me, Mr Shine. I do not have ambitions to enter the boxing ring.”

He laughed at that, properly and heartily.

“I daresay,” he said. “And just as well. I take it what you want is to condition yourself against weakness.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of spirit as much as body.”

“I find that the two go hand in hand. So, we are clear, and need waste no more time in preliminaries.” He rose from his stump, standing more than a head taller than me, casting a shadow that sheltered me from the beating sun. “The first thing I must ask you to do - and I fear you will protest but it is necessary - is to take off your outer clothes.”

I gasped.

“Take them off?”

“I said so, didn’t I? They will restrict you. You can do far more without them.”

I looked about me, somewhat wildly.

“But…are you sure? What if someone should come down here?”

“If you are wasting my time…”

“No, no. I am serious. I just…”

I quailed beneath his baleful glare and reached for the collar of my blouse. I could see that its voluminous leg of mutton sleeves probably weren’t conducive to free movement, but all the same, if he had been one whit less intimidating, I would have argued the point and tried to keep my modesty.

I kept my eyes to the ground, my face on fire and my fingers a-fumble as I stripped to my camisole and one final petticoat. Despite the fact that all I had really uncovered were my arms and a portion of my collarbone, I was on the verge of tears of mortification. Mother had been right about me all along. All it had taken for a man to get me undressed was a word.

I turned away from him, folding my skirt and blouse and placing them on the grass.

“There now,” he said. “Does that not feel better? Stand straight and put your arms by your side. Do not give me that tragic face – you have taken a step that shows you have courage. That is good. I have no time for missishness.”

Hardly missish to object to showing your undergarments to a strange man, I thought, but his commendation of my bravery made me lift my chin and put my shoulders back, eager to please some more.

“Much too thin,” he said disapprovingly. “I hope you are eating well.”

“I try,” I said. “But my appetite is not what it should be yet.”

“Try harder. Eat all that you are given. Now, hold out your arms straight in front of you and keep them there as long as you can.”

My arms stretched towards him, my fingertips almost touching his upper body. Such a simple task proved difficult for me, my arms beginning to tire almost immediately.

“Turn them the other way, palms uppermost,” he said, and I retracted them immediately, folding them tight around my waist.

“What?” he frowned. “What is unreasonable in that? Come, put them out as I told you to.”

“I…would rather not,” I whispered, looking away towards the lake’s dazzling surface, letting it bleach the sight from my eyes.

He sighed heavily and seized me by my offending wrists. Any attempt to resist was futile, and he overcame me immediately, pulling my arms into the required extension.

I shut my eyes in defeat as he ran his thumbs over the raised scar tissue disfiguring the undersides of my arms.

“Who did this to you?” he asked levelly.

“Nobody,” I whispered, seeing starbursts of light against my inner eyelids.

“Do you mean to tell me that you did it to yourself?”

I could not speak. The starbursts were replaced by a rush of tears; I had to screw my eyes up to try and repel them.

“You need not tell me,” he said, holding them tight. “But you must not do this again. Do you understand me? I will not stand for it.”

I nodded, in an agony of shame and dark recollection.

“If you feel the urge to hurt yourself,” he said, “you must use the strengthening exercises I will teach you instead. Repeat them until it passes, or until you fall down in exhaustion, unable to raise a hand to harm or to help yourself. Promise me this, or I can go no further with you.”

I curled my shaking fingers into his until we stood clasped by our hands, his grip tight over mine.

“I promise,” I said, as the first tears spilled.

“Good girl,” he whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

I did not meet him again for two days. We had agreed that a daily evasion of my morning walk would arouse the suspicion of the nurses, but it was easy enough to claim fatigue every few days and slip out unobserved while everyone was still fussing with bonnets and boots and parasols.

In the meantime, I lay on my bed, lifting candlesticks above my head and holding them there, then spreading my arms out to the side. I would get into intriguing positions on the floor, intended to strengthen my legs and lend power to my core. I was as yet unable to perform a single press-up – my arms gave out as soon as I tried – but he had said that this would come, in time, and I had faith in him.

I ached most horribly all over after that first session, but he had warned me that this would be so, and that it was a good thing, signifying the reawakening of long-dormant muscles. The pain was a secret glory; I enjoyed the reminder of what he had wrought in me as I moved stiffly through the day room.

I lay down, then sat up, then lay down, then sat up for as many times as I could, five times a day. Each exercise was slow and steady, keeping the strain on my lungs at a minimum. All the same, I was sometimes impeded by a coughing fit, signalling that it was time to rest.

I lay in my bed after nightfall, thinking of his fingers on my scars. The memory was powerful, yet lulling. I would drift into sleep with it in my mind, hoping the emotion it evoked would pass into my dreams. Above all things, I wanted to be held like that again.

At our second meeting, he was moderately pleased with my progress.

“I see you have been hard at it,” he said, noticing how much longer I could hold two medium-sized rocks out to my sides compared to the last time. “You are not pushing yourself beyond your limit, I hope? Remember your lungs are not back to full-strength yet.”

“I know,” I gasped, dropping the stones. “I am being careful.”

He worked me until my limbs trembled and refused to do more. At times, he would manipulate me into the required position, and I am ashamed to say that I would sometimes break the position deliberately, in the hope of having him readjust me. I had never felt anything akin to the thrill that rippled through my body, like the sun caught suddenly on the lake, when he touched me.

I fancied it was something to do with his latent power being absorbed into me. If only I could take in some of his strength by osmosis, how fine that would be.

I said this to him, jokingly, but he shook his head, frowning.

“I am a shadow of what I once was,” he said.

He stood looking towards the lake, away from me. I had sunk on to the tree stump, my legs no longer fit to support me. I wanted to reach out to him, but he would not see it if I did.

“Then what you once were must have been a sight to behold,” I said.

He looked at me then, as if he thought I might be teasing. I chewed my lip, doing my best to radiate sincerity.

“It was,” he said. “I was ten years undefeated in the boxing ring. There was no man to hold a candle to me in my prime.”

“I am so sorry that your career ended in the way it did,” I said.

“What do you know about it?” he said roughly, his eyes narrowing.

I remembered Daisy’s entreaty not to repeat what she had told me, and bit my tongue.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Only that it seems unlikely you will box again. Is it not?”

He nodded slowly.

“These fists will never don the gloves again,” he said. “But I am saving up some blows for one or two men in particular. One day.”

This sounded ominous, and he must have seen the change in my expression.

“But that is none of your concern,” he said. “You must concentrate on repeating these exercises I have shown you, as often as you are able, until we can meet again. Next time, I am determined you shall be able to support your weight on your arms, do you mind me?”

“I will do my best,” I said, then, taking courage for I ached to know more of him, “Might I ask, do you intend to go back to policing when you are well enough?”

“That is not the bargain I made, my girl,” he said, handing my outer garments back to me. “I give you my expert knowledge of physical culture, not my life history. Get dressed now, and off with you. We will meet again the Saturday forenoon.”

*

On the Saturday forenoon it was harder than I anticipated to get away from my guardians. When I pleaded fatigue, Daisy frowned and fetched Matron, asking her whether they shouldn’t call in the doctor. I was devoting so much time to my exercising that my absence from communal life had been noted, and interpreted as a relapse.

I had to go outside with Daisy in the end, to prove that my lungs had not reverted to their fully consumptive state. Once in the rose garden, it was then necessary to create a diversion, sending her back to the house on a pointless errand so that I was free to flee to the lake.

I was breathless when I got there, and I needed to rest and gather myself while Shine frowned down at me, squeezing an old tennis ball in one hand.

“This is not looking too lively,” he complained.

“I had to run,” I said. “Or as close to running as I could manage. It was a near thing.”

“Are you well now? The truth, if you please.”

I nodded. “I promise, I am ready. But I fear I am still not strong enough for press-ups.”

He rolled his eyes and came to stand before me.

“Come here,” he said. “And push me over.”

I laughed nervously. “I do not think…”

“I do not issue such an invitation often, Miss. You should avail yourself. There’s plenty of men around Limehouse and environs would pay for the privilege. Your clothes first.”

I shed my blouse and skirt easily this time, without a second thought. He had been so right about the freedom of movement their divestiture gave me. Nowadays, I hated to wear the stupid things and longed for lighter garments all the time.

I stood before him, unsure of how to proceed.

“So you wish for me to…?”

“Push me. Go on. Hard as you like. Aim is to get me on the ground.”

I put out my hands and pressed them to his chest – not a serious attempt, more an investigative move to give me some clear idea of the challenge I faced.

“That will not do,” he said, smirking. “I shall need to feel it, at least.”

I tried again, putting all my weight behind it, but it was like trying to fell a tree. I should need an axe to get anywhere at all.

“Why, Featherweight,” he said. “I see now what I am working with. Give it one last go.”

I gritted my teeth and gave it everything, cannoning into him with a shriek of frustration. I might as well have run into a wall. Yet I would willingly run into it, over and over again, with no hope of success, just to feel that masculine firmness against me.

“No? Well, let’s try the press-ups, shall we? Do you recall the position I taught you?”

I recalled it too well, and not with pleasure. Pouting somewhat, I dropped to my knees and crept forward on to my bent elbows. The laundry had complained about my dusty petticoats, and this was the reason.

Shine prowled about my prone form, straightening my legs and spine with the toe of his boot until he was satisfied with me.

“There now – push yourself up. Don’t give up…keep going…ah, you are close.”

I had collapsed, face first into the moss-strewn dirt.

He would not relent that day. He had us kneel, facing one another, so that I might push my palms against his in the hope of forcing them back one fraction of an inch. When this proved once more fruitless, he told me to make a fist and hit them backwards.

“I cannot,” I said. “What if I were to hurt you?”

“Trust me,” he said, finding the idea irritatingly droll, “you will not. Come on. Here is my hand. Give it a good smack.”

Still I hesitated.

“Who has done you wrong in your life?” he urged. “Think of them. Make this hand their face. Pay them back…show them what you think of them…that’s it, swing it, hard. Ah. Good.”

I was shocked at how much I had put into the blow. It did not seem to have hurt Shine – his hand had not moved – but I felt the sting in my own knuckles.

“You have it in you,” he gloated, rubbing his hands together briefly before holding them up again. “I will make a fighter of you yet. Come, again. See that face…everything they ever said or did to you…see it and pay it back…Oh, yes, that’s a beauty.”

I smashed my fist into his palm, then doubled over and crumpled to the ground, suddenly overcome with the force of my memories.

“No, do not cry,” he said, kneeling beside me. “That was good, Featherweight. That was the best I’ve seen you do…now this will not do.” He put an awkward arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side, holding me there until my burst of tears subsided.

“I am sorry,” I sniffed. “I do not know what came over me.”

“Whoever did you wrong, did a thorough job of it,” he surmised. I sighed into him as he stroked my hair. Clinging to his braces, I raised my face to his.

He saw what was in my eyes and dipped his forehead to mine for a moment before lifting it and looking away.

“Don’t you look at me like that, girl,” he said, back to the gruffness of our first meeting. “No good can come of it.”

“I don’t mean anything,” I said, terrified that he would cast me off. “I am tired, and you have stirred up some unpleasant memories. That is all.”

“It had better be,” he said. “I have nothing to offer. A broken man, half-blind, cannot be a good bet for a spring chicken like you.”

“It is so hard to believe that you were blind for that time,” I said, choosing to ignore his words lest they dealt a wound to my heart from which recovery could not be made. “You have eyes that seem to see forever.”

He levelled them at me. They were stormy, unreadable.

“They see a good deal now that they should not,” he said. “Here.” He fished a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket. “Sort yourself out. Those nurses will be frantic by now, and you are spent.”

“Shall we meet again on Monday, or perhaps Tuesday?”

“Leave it for a spell,” he said, after a pause. “Strikes me you need to rest.”

“Oh, I do not! Please, I am very eager to work and improve. I hate resting, I have had my fill of it.”

“It is more for my sake than yours,” he muttered. “Now go, or I will cancel the course altogether.”


	5. Chapter 5

For the next few days, I lay on my bed in aching despair.

Although I had not managed to push Mr Shine away literally, somehow I had succeeded in doing so in this other, deeper and more devastating way. He had seen into me and had not wanted what he saw.

Everything was in ruins; a desolate wasteland stretched ahead of me, a mean life of struggle and want. Perhaps it would have been better if the tuberculosis had carried me away, as it had done Mother before me.

All the same, I did not shirk my exercises. I continued to lift and stretch, to squat and bend, with every free moment of solitude. By Monday, I was finally able to perform one single press-up. Oh, how I longed to be able to tell Mr Shine – or, even better, to show him. But he sent no word, and I knew in my heart that he never would.

Tuesday afternoon held a bitter surprise.

“You have a visitor, Miss,” said Daisy, coming into my room with clean linens. “He is waiting for you in the rose garden. Were you expecting anyone?”

“He?” I said, my legs failing to let me up from the chair where I sat.

“A gentleman. I didn’t catch his name – it was matron admitted him. She sent me up to fetch you. Shall I go out with you, or will you be all right on your own?”

She had reached out to help me up and I clung fiercely to her hand.

“Please come with me,” I said.

She sensed my dread, her expression altering as I was hauled to my feet.

“Oh, Miss Carlton, shall I tell him you aren’t well? You don’t have to go down, you know, if you aren’t feeling up to it.”

“No,” I said, surprising myself. Mere days ago, I would have taken her up on the offer. But now I felt able to face the demon. “I will go down.”

The man in the rose garden was exactly whom I had feared he might be.

George Farren.

I stood beneath the arch, leaning on Daisy’s arm, looking at his neat, black-clad figure, his hands folded tidily in his lap. A sudden rush of anger almost overcame me.

Well, it was better than fear, and I knew I could use it.

I let go of Daisy and walked swiftly to the bench where he sat.

“Why have you come?” I asked, ignoring his indication that I should sit down beside him.

“Why, Eve, of course I have come,” he said. “I wonder that you do not chide me for not coming sooner. Please sit. You look so pale, child.”

“I prefer to stand. I also prefer that you should leave.”

He tilted his head, raised an eyebrow, maddeningly calm.

“Leave? My dearest, I have come to see you. You will sit down now, if you please, and we will talk like people of the civilised world.”

“What do you know of the civilised world? Is that a world where a young woman can be kept locked in a back room for seven years?”

“Do you speak ill of your dear departed mama?” Now his voice was changed, condemnatory, rattled.

“I speak as I am finding…as I should have found before. My mother treated me ill in locking me away, but she would not have done it without your encouragement. _You_ are to blame for my suffering. Not alone, but in large part. So I beg you to leave me now and never show your face to me again.”

It was wonderful to hear these words spoken by my own voice. I was another Eve - the Eve Mr Shine had made. I almost felt him standing by my side.

“Eve, what has come over you? Is it the illness? I have heard that it can have a deleterious effect on the nervous system…perhaps you share the weakness of your poor sister…”

“How dare you? How dare you speak of her? And how dare you cast doubt on my sanity?”

I saw Daisy, still standing by the arch, ready to step forward. The passion I exhibited now was dangerous to my health, no doubt, and she could send him away on its account, but I felt I must have my say first.

“I see that you are not in your right mind,” he said, his anger evident now in his tone. “But this will pass, Eve, and when you are well again, we shall speak some more of our wedding plans.”

“No!” I cried, and my rage fired my blood and gave me such power as I had never felt before. “I will _never_ marry you, never! Now that Mother is gone, you have no claim at all on me. I consider our engagement to be at its final end.”

He stood up now, red in the face.

“Well, I do not,” he said, spitting in his effort not to shout. “You are still my betrothed, and if you try to claim otherwise, I shall sue for breach of promise.”

I laughed scornfully – heavens, where was this all coming from? I had never laughed in such a manner before.

“That legislation does not apply to women,” I jeered. “Do you know nothing?”

“Perhaps there is not precedent,” he said, “but what is to stop me from creating it? You _will_ be my wife, Eve, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”

He lunged at my arm, and that was enough to bring Daisy rushing forward.

“I think it’s best if you leave now, sir,” she said, sprinting along the path.

“I cannot agree,” said Farren. “And you will do well to keep your nose out of other people’s business. Eve, remember what has passed between us and put your mind to your duty.”

“Go,” I raved, clinging to Daisy in order to stay upright.

“I will not leave until I have your assurance that you will retract these wild words and come to your senses.”

“You will leave when the lady says so, and no later,” added a fourth voice.

My heart twisted tight in my chest. I turned to see Mr Shine at my shoulder.

“I will not take orders from the likes of you,” spat Farren.

“Perhaps you’ll take them from my fist then?”

He stood there, high and broad, his face dark with menace, gripping on to his walking cane as if it were a sword of righteousness.

“I…will not…Eve, we will speak again soon…”

He turned and strode swiftly from the garden.

“Thank you, Mr Shine,” said Daisy fervently. “What an awful man.”

I moved to speak to him, but he was already halfway back to the house, his walking cane being more a prop than a necessity this afternoon, it seemed.

All the fervour that had risen in my heart sank back. He had left me again.

*

The next evening was the weekly mixer. I was in no mood for it, but I let Daisy persuade me to don my green silk once more and sit listlessly in a corner of the room, fanning myself against the stifling evening heat.

I turned down Lawrence Muldoon’s invitation to dance, but as the willow was stripped in the middle of the room, I spied Mr Shine entering the room. He cast his eye around until he saw me, then, with a gesture of his head, indicated that I should go to him.

I did so at once. He had left the room straight after, so I followed him into the vestibule, away from the noise and laughter.

“Thank you for what you did yesterday,” I said, as soon as we were alone.

He went over to the door of one of the side offices, used by visiting doctors as a consulting room, and opened it.

“A word in private,” he said.

There was but one chair, which he left to me, whilst he leant back against a high couch, intended for patients to lie upon.

“Tell me about your visitor,” he said. His face was dark, with no trace of any friendly feeling.

“His name is George Farren. He is a preacher at a non-conformist chapel in Forest Gate, near to where I live.”

“He seems to think you are engaged to him, or have I misunderstood?”

“He…would be under that impression,” I said unhappily. “Yes.”

“Wrongly, I gather?”

“I hate him.” I looked up at Shine, willing him to accept my word. “I hate him with a passion.”

“You’ll forgive a man for finding all this a touch confusing.”

“I know.” I pressed my lips tight. I was going to have to give him the full story, and I dreaded its rehearsal, for it would take me back into a place I thought to have fled. “I will tell you…”

He reached into his inner jacket and produced a small flask.

“Perhaps this might help,” he suggested.

The liquid that passed my lips was fiery and made me gasp, but he was right. It helped.

“If I am to explain this entanglement, I will need to give you a little of my background.”

Shine made a ‘carry on’ gesture.

“My life was quite happy until my father passed away. I was twelve, and my sister Joan fourteen. My mother’s grief was so excessive that we all wore black from that day on, until now.”

“Like the Queen,” said Shine, a little mockingly.

“Something like. My mother’s excessive grief led to an extremity of religious devotion. She took solace in the Bible, making us read it every night, and sew samplers full of scripture when we were not reading. She began to attend Mr Farren’s church about a year or two later. Mr Farren’s church takes a very hard line on most things and is particularly harsh on matters of…” I hesitated to say it, flashing a rueful look at Shine in the hope that he would take my meaning.

“Of?”

“Of, well, of…I shall simply say that he advised my mother to let Joan and I have no contact whatsoever with anyone of the male sex. He said that we were at a dangerous age and should be watched over and protected at all times. Joan, at this time, was sixteen and she had a sweetheart – a secret, of course, from all but me. A young man who worked as a clerk in a firm of solicitors. They were rarely able to meet, so he joined the church congregation as a pretext.”

“He must have been keen,” remarked Shine.

“He was, and so was Joan. But then there came a dreadful day…oh…” I stopped, still troubled by the memory. Shine handed me his flask, and I took another draught.

“They were discovered,” I said. “Embracing in a cupboard, when Joan was supposed to have been there to polish up the pews. Oh, it was terrible. Farren, having thrown the boy out for good, persuaded my mother to…to have Joan…”

I took a few deep breaths.

“She was sent away. Committed to an institution.”

“For kissing a boy?”

“Farren had her certified insane, but it was sheer agony of mind after what they made her go through… They locked her up, they beat her, they made her confess her impurity in front of the entire congregation. She was broken. My poor Joan was quite broken. It was no wonder she fought and raged against Mother and Farren. She was not mad! She was driven to distraction.”

Shine was silent for a moment.

“And then you?”

“You can imagine the effect this had on the mind of an impressionable fourteen year old. I was terrified that the same thing would happen to me. As soon as I came into my…as soon as I was sixteen, my mother locked me in the back room of the house. I was allowed out only to attend church, or any special event that demanded my presence. When I was twenty one, I was engaged to Mr Farren, but they made an agreement that the marriage would only take place after my mother’s death, as I was to be her companion and nurse in her old age.”

“You were not consulted about any of this, I take it?”

“I was far too afraid to object to any of it. I knew it was wicked, but I wished every day for Mr Farren’s early death, so that none of it would have to come to pass. When my mother came down with consumption, none could have nursed her more diligently than I. Despite how she had abused me, I feared her death more than anything. When I caught it myself, it was a relief to me…a relief…”

I broke down, overcome at last by the horror that had been my past life. Only now did it seem to come into focus, after years of patiently bearing it.

Shine removed himself from the couch and dropped to his knees in front of me, dabbing at my face with a handkerchief.

“Featherweight,” he said softly. “That is all past and done now. That man will never trouble you again, not if I have anything to do with it. Hush now.”

The door opened with a thump and matron stood on the threshold, her countenance as forbidding as I had ever seen it.

“What are you doing in here? Get out, now, the pair of you, and don’t let me catch you consorting like this again.”

We left, but before parting he bent to whisper in my ear, “Tomorrow, by the lake.”


	6. Chapter 6

Although yet an hour until noon, the day’s humidity clung to my skin, and I removed my outer clothes even before I reached the lake, leaving them hanging limply on a tree branch before entering our secret glade in my camisole and drawers and nothing else, not even my stockings.

The mossy ground felt cool and soothing under my bare soles. Mr Shine was not yet here, so I took the opportunity to sit at the side of the water and dip my feet into it. My toes churned up soft mud, but I could see that further out it was deliciously clear. If only one could take a drink of it. I hoped Mr Shine had thought to bring something to aid refreshment.

I sat kicking my heels, watching water fowl dive and glide under the sun’s tyranny before swimming beneath the shade of the overhanging branches at the other side of the expanse. My shoulders were warm, my feet were wet and I felt a oneness with the world I had rarely known.

“Life is good, after all,” I said, contemplating jumping in entirely and trying to teach myself to swim. But no doubt it would be bad for my chest, as most things apparently were, so I leant back on my elbows and drifted, plunging into those cool green depths inside my head instead. They were the colour of Mr Shine’s eyes, but scarcely deeper. What could ever be deeper?

“You think of becoming a mermaid?”

Shine’s voice woke me from my dream. I withdrew my feet from the water and moved around to face him.

“There are no consumptive mermaids,” I told him. “But I think the life would suit me.”

“Where are your clothes?” he asked, hitching an eyebrow at my state of undress.

“Hanging up there somewhere,” I said, indicating the tree vaguely. “I wanted to be ready for you.”

He had nothing to say to that, but I saw his adam’s apple bob in his open collar and he looked down at me as if I had said something to trouble him.

“I am so happy you are here,” I said, wanting to shift that alarming look from his eyes. “I have been quite miserable these last few days. But I have been doing my exercises, and look, I will show you, I can do three press-ups in succession.”

I moved away from the softer ground by the water’s edge and took up position a few feet from him. As I dropped into the first repetition, he came closer.

“No, no, you don’t need to show me,” he said. “Get up now. I have something else in mind for today.”

“But I can do it! Look!”

My arms were shaking with the effort of it, but I was determined to prove myself to him.

“Miss Carlton!” He dropped to his haunches and closed his hand around my quivering upper arm, pulling me out of my position and up to my feet. “Stop.”

“Oh, I think you can call me Eve,” I gasped, undone by the closeness of him, and his hand upon me.

“You have done well,” he said, his agitation ebbing away as he released his grip on me. “I’m proud of you, girl. But you must not wear yourself out too soon. As I’ve said, I have something else in mind today.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

I saw then that he carried a bundle in a large tea cloth, and I wondered what it could be. He walked before me, away from our habitual bank and through the foliage towards other, more distant shores.

Eventually the tangle grew very thick and Mr Shine had to hold the brambles out of my way for me to pass through, managing to scratch his own hands in the process. Just as I thought it had become entirely impenetrable, we came through another thorny mass to find a large clearing and, in that clearing, a small wooden shed of sorts.

“Oh,” I exclaimed. “What is this?”

“A boathouse, of course,” said Mr Shine.

“And are there boats in it?”

“Chiefly piles of rotting wood,” he said, “but there is one good rower, and what is more, a serviceable pair of oars.”

I grinned at him, enchanted.

“You mean…?”

“Do you care to come out on to the water with me, Miss Carlton?” he said with mock-gallantry, offering me his arm.

True enough, when we opened up the protesting doors, a wooden boat with oars laid across the seats awaited us.

“Are you sure it will float?” I asked, envisioning all the possible disasters that could befall.

“I know it. I have taken her out a few times; she is perfectly sound. Your weight won’t make too much difference.”

He dropped his tea-cloth bundle into the hull and began to pull the vessel out on to some long-overgrown sloping tracks.

“Hop in, then,” he said, once the prow had crested the water’s surface.

I perched myself on the rear seat, moving the oars aside. Mr Shine gave one last shove and we were afloat. He had to wade in to the lake a little way in order to climb aboard himself and sat opposite me, the lower portion of his trousers, socks and shoes quite soaked.

“I should have taken these off first,” he said ruefully, removing the shoes, then the waterlogged socks. “Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your book and strip down to the foundations, eh? What do you think?”

I blushed like fire, thinking that I should not object.

“It is rather hot,” I said, my mouth stretching into a smile despite myself. He smiled back, complicit.

“Take up the oars, then,” he said.

“What? Me?”

I laughed as he fitted them through the rowlocks on each side then offered them to me.

“Yes, why not? Rowing is very good for strengthening the body, and this lake hardly offers much in the way of resistant current. Take us out to the other side and find some shade.”

“But I’ve never…” Doubtfully, I took the oars and tried to manipulate them, but they were heavy and the paddles kept flattening themselves against the water against my will.

I expected Shine to chide me, or grow impatient, but he simply watched me as I struggled to master the technique, putting his hand over the side and letting his fingers dabble in the water.

“Almost there, girl,” he said after a while. “That’s more like it. Now, find your rhythm. One stroke…two…three…you see. It ain’t so difficult, is it?”

I beamed up at him. The boat was finally moving according to my dictates, instead of drifting or lurching in mad zigzags.  

“Once you can place the paddles correctly…” I gasped, for it was indeed rather strenuous, “…it’s quite simple.”

We glided into the centre of the expanse. The sun was harsh and I was soon unpleasantly conscious of how I perspired. My usual exercise regimen was slow and measured, consisting of stretching and improving my strength, but this was a different order of exertion.

“You are tiring,” noted Shine. “Here, hand them over.”

I was grateful to do so, although I was a little disappointed not to have taken us all the way to the shaded area I had been aiming for. Mr Shine rowed us towards the banks of green willow and overhanging alder, then put down the oars, allowing us to drift.

“Have you worked up an appetite?” he asked, untying his bundle to reveal a quartern loaf with a pat of butter, a chunk of cheese, twists of salt and pepper, some apples and grapes and a bottle of what I took to be lemonade.

“Oh, a picnic!” My eyes shone. I had not had a picnic since I was quite a little girl. “How did you come by all this?”

“I had a word in the kitchen.”

“And they just gave it to you?”

“Of course. I can be persuasive, when the necessity arises.”

“I am quite sure you can.”

I watched him cut the cheese into slices with a pocket knife while I broke up and buttered the loaf. Liquid refreshment was urgently needed first, though, and we both drank deep of the lemonade.

“Of late,” he said, looking away from me into the trees, “I am reminded of the force I used to possess. Force I thought gone from me.”

“Of late?” I said, my heart expanding in its bounds.

“You,” he said softly. “You have reminded me.”

“I am glad,” I said. “You have done so much for me that it is only fair that the favour be returned. You have made me new.”

He looked at me, shaking his head.

“If I have done anything, it is only to bring out what was already in you.”

“No,” I said fervently. “I could never have held my own with… _him…_ in the way I did if I had not known you. You have given me spirit.”

“You had that spirit all along,” he said. “It was just crushed for a time, that’s all.”

“It needed new life breathed into it,” I said. “You have been that breath.”

He took up the bottle again and drank a long draught.

“Well, have it so, if you must,” he said, almost angrily. “But do not give me all the credit.”

I did not want to quarrel with him, so I dropped the subject and ate my bread and cheese in silence.

He lay back in the boat, staring up at the lattice of branches overhead.

“This is better,” he said. “That glaring sun makes my head pound.”

He took a small phial from his pocket and drained the contents, which I took to be some manner of physic. It seemed to calm him, and he put his hand overboard again, letting the water lap at his fingers.

“A man could get accustomed to this,” he said, his voice lower, drawling.

“Tranquillity,” I suggested.

“Mm. Peace. Lord knows, I have seen little enough of it in my time.”

“Mr Shine,” I said with diffidence, “I have told you the wretched story of my life. I think it only fair if you will let me know a little of yours.”

“There is precious little of it fit for a young lady’s ears,” he said, raising his head and squinting at me.

“I do not care,” I said. “In fact, so much the better. I have spent too many years in seclusion and I want to know about life, the dirt and danger of it, the crime and vice of the streets to which I must return. Tell me about it, I entreat you.”

He laughed lazily.

“Oh, my girl,” he said. “I could not tell you the half of it. But perhaps there is a tale or two that might suit.”

“Tell me,” I repeated. “Tell me all you can of Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

I leant forward, half-expecting Shine to flatly refuse my request and force a change of subject, but whatever medicament he had taken seemed to have mellowed him, for instead he settled himself in his semi-prone position and shut his eyes against the flashes of sunlight that attacked us through the overhang.

“Jedediah Shine,” he murmured, echoing my words. “Now there was a man who held his own on those teeming streets. And others beside, far distant.”

“You have travelled?” I surmised, hanging on his words.

“Hong Kong,” he said.

“Truly?” My lips parted in time with the gentle dropping of my jaw. “That is such a long way to go. What took you there?”

“When others have asked me, I have always cited a spirit of adventure and a desire to understand that the world does not end at the Essex turnpike. But I had my own reasons too…”

“I would dearly like to know them.”

He opened his eyes and propped himself up a little, eyeing me as if trying to decide whether I was to be trusted with the truth.

“You do not have the monopoly on wretched families, Featherweight,” he said. “Mine disowned me when I joined the Met.”

“Did they really? How horrible of them. How lonely for you.”

“When I say ‘family’, it was more a kind of clan,” he continued. “For it was just my mother and me in our household – never knew my father. But I had uncles and aunts and cousins coming out of my ears, and very few of them what you’d call respectable.”

Much as I regretted Mr Shine’s breach with his family, my blood thrilled at the promise of a gritty true-life tale. He was a man who – unlike me - had lived, and I thirsted to know what experiences had formed him.

“Saffron Hill was our manor. I don’t suppose you’d know it, and the rookery I dwelled in is mostly flattened now, but back then it was not the kind of place a lady would venture. Even the coppers only went in there mob-handed, and even then, more often than not, they left without their helmets, whistling for reinforcements.” He chuckled darkly. “I knocked a fair few of ‘em off myself.”

“It sounds like a terrifying place.”

“You may say so, but it educated me well for my purpose,” he said. “No better place for a copper to study than the school of hard knocks. My cousin Malachy, he says to me, ‘Jed, my lad, keep your wits sharp and your dukes up and you might just make it to manhood alive’. I was seven or eight at the time.”

“Heavens.”

“Now Malachy, he was a swell mobsman, one of the top dogs on the Hill. If you know what that means.”

I was dubious. “Some kind of…?”

“A swell mob is a criminal gang, a good cut above the small-fry pickpockets and steamer crews. They’ve got the swagger and they like to dress the part – like your West End swells, you see. Malachy was like a god to me, with his gold pocket watches and jewelled tie pins. He’d visit us every Sunday afternoon, bringing bullseyes and tin soldiers for me, gin for my mother. I had thoughts of growing up to be just like him, and so did he. I was groomed to be his right-hand, and eventual heir to his low-life throne.”

“He took you as a seven year old boy and put you in the mould of a criminal?” I was aghast but enthralled. It was straight from the pages of Dickens.

“I was quick and I was tough. He’d set up fights for me with our rivals, the Italian lads. By the time I was eleven, I already had a reputation, and I liked the feeling; I liked the respect it got me, and the attention of the mob men. I thought I was on my way to owning those streets.”

“But you didn’t end up in the mob.”

“No, because shortly after that, there commenced a battle for my soul. The master at the board school saw me slipping through his fingers, playing hookey, going down the road to – what he would call – ruin. He had hopes for me. I was a bright lad, in my way, though I tried not to show it, for book learning wasn’t considered a suitable occupation for a Saffron Hill man. But the master had a word with the curate, who took me under his wing. Made me join his boys’ club, and gave me lessons on his own account when I grew too old for school. I didn’t have much taste for Latin, but I had an eye for his wife, so I played along.”

“Mr Shine! Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife!”

“I know, I’m sorry to shock you, but she was…” He sighed. “Anyhow, nothing came of it, it was just a boyish craze. More to the point, the boys’ club had an excellent boxing gym, and I put my energies into learning the noble art. The curate thought he’d scored a great success when I told him I wanted to join the police force.”

“Well, hadn’t he?”

“He didn’t know my reasons, which were less to do with wanting to be on the side of good, more to do with being on the side that won.”

“Your honesty…” I said, my breath rather taken away by this admission.

He laughed briefly. “It doesn’t do me much credit, does it? But there’s the bones of it. As I grew older, I saw where the real power lay, and it wasn’t with the boys in the spats and silk waistcoats playing cards in the tavern back rooms. Malachy got taken in the act of a job on a diamond dealer in Hatton Garden. He was never coming out of prison, and that wasn’t the life I wanted for myself.”

“Of course not.”

“With him gone, everyone turned to me, expecting me to take his place. I refused. My mother had drunk herself to death by then; there was nothing to keep me in Saffron Hill. I went to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and persuaded them that men like me – men who knew the underground life – were what they needed. They agreed, and I was on the beat in Bethnal Green the week of my eighteenth birthday. But my uncles, aunts and cousins never had another word to say to me, and to this day I haven’t set foot again in Saffron Hill, and likely never will.”

“You were tremendously brave, to stand against all that.”

“And this is what people like Reid cannot fathom,” he continued, angrily and seemingly to himself. “These genteel boys with their drawing room manners will never know how a man like me has to fight his way out of the snakepit by any means at his disposal. Jedediah Shine decided early on that no man was going to knock him down or stand in his way. And for years…years and years…no man did…”

There was a silence, broken only by the ragged cries of the water birds and the nearby buzzing of bees on the bank. The air was thicker than ever, but the sunlight was thinning, the sky darkening by slow increments.

I looked at him: his face, so often shadowed, now in repose; his still-powerful body suspended in immobility; his bare feet, pale and vulnerable. I looked at them and loved them all, with a love that ached, because I knew it could never come to anything.

“You will stand up again,” I said, almost whispering because I feared his response. “You are strong.”

He sat up, and his eyes were on fire, but the sudden motion caused one of the oars to slip out of its rowlock and land with a faint splash in the water.

As one, we bent over the side of the boat to reach for it.

“No, girl, get back on the other side,” he cried, pushing me back to steady the vessel.

He got the oar and put it straight while I stood, wobbling and wavering in the rocking boat, eventually losing my footing and falling slap-bang into Mr Shine’s lap.

“Oh!” I clung to his shoulders and his arms closed around my waist, preventing me from falling further. Our faces were close; a river bug could not have flown up and fitted into the space between them. The scarring around his eye was arresting, but could not distract me from the eye itself, nor the way it was looking at me.

“Steady, girl,” he said hoarsely.

Neither of us made any attempt to extricate ourselves. I rejoiced, for I had never felt such a sweet affinity with another body, never wanted to find myself in such close quarters with another in this urgent way before. I felt that, if he dislodged me, my life was over, where here it was just beginning.

“Jedediah,” I said. I had spoken his name many times in the privacy of my room, testing its splendid size and shape on my tongue, but I had never seriously imagined I would say it to him.

“I should not…”

“You should.”

He needed only that small encouragement to put his lips to mine. Oh, the fierce delight I took in the way his body moved against mine; his arms tightening, his chest pressing against me so I could feel, just faintly, the rhythm of his heart. My blood rushed and roared, and I knew that his did, too. Only those thin layers of cotton lay between our heated skin, and nothing at all between our mouths, which met gently at first, then with all the pressure we had let build before reaching this point.

This, after all, was a kiss.

My engagement with George, arid as it was, had yielded only a few correspondingly dry pecks. This was as unlike them as night from day.

The kiss was swollen and overgrown with our need for each other. It became an entity in itself, swallowing us up inside it, so that we were no longer two distinct beings but one whole, a thing made of desire. The madness of it can be described by saying that, when he put his tongue inside my mouth, it felt nothing but natural, an expected progression. Yet I had never even known that such things were done. I yielded to everything, and felt I would not deny him anything at all, even if it were to bring me to ruin.

I clasped my hands about his neck and twined my legs with his. The kiss was by now so prolonged that I felt burnt about the chin by his beard, but this was nothing to me. He could have stripped the skin off me, for all I cared. He uttered a low sound into my mouth; I felt it rise from his chest.

_No, do not end it, do not break apart from me._

Another low sound followed, but this time it did not vibrate through me, and it was rapidly succeeded by a fall of fat drops on our heads and faces.

I mewled with dismay as he pulled himself forcibly from the kiss.

“Thunder,” he said, looking up at the flashing sky. “We must get you out of the rain.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

The sky could have thrown poison-tipped daggers at us and I would still have wanted to stay there in Jedediah Shine’s arms, kissing the hours away, but he thought differently and I had to bow to his stronger will.

He shuffled me around so that my back was to his chest and threw his coat over me, covering me to my shoulders. The rain fell ever faster as he took the oars and began to row us back to the boathouse.

I put my own hands next to his, mimicking and assisting his efforts. Our arms worked together, enfolding me, while the back of my head moved rhythmically in time with the shoulder it rested against.

Rain swept ahead of us and beside us in great steaming sheets, turning the parched riverbank to glossy, verdant green again. It was cool and refreshing on my burning skin and I laughed at the sensation, embracing it.

The thunder and lightning added to my exhilaration. This was life, this was wonder, this was all I had been missing for all these years. I was in a beautiful place with a man I loved, and nothing could ever take this precious time from me.

It was almost a disappointment to reach the shore and the boathouse. The lake had felt like an enchanted place where common rules of life did not apply. What if Jedediah and I could only be together on its waters?

He helped me out and chivvied me into the boathouse while he set to pulling the boat back up the half-hidden slipway.

Inside, it was cool and damp-smelling, and I felt sure the dark corners played host to a thousand cobwebs, but there was an elevated section at the end that was clean and well-kept, and I made my way towards it. It seemed Jedediah had been using this as some kind of retreat; there were cushions and blankets rolled up by the wall, and a table and chair with an ashtray and a box of the _Illustrated Police News_.

“This is your office,” I said, turning to him as his footstep creaked on the floorboards below.

“I come here to hide away from the incessant _treatment_ up there,” he said, stepping up to stand beside me. “There’s only so much kindness and concern I can stomach. Come here, girl, you’re dripping wet.”

He unrolled one of the blankets and used it to dry me off roughly, as one would a wet dog. He himself was slicked with wet, his beard full of droplets and his shirt clinging transparently, but he paid no mind to himself.

“They can blame me for a lot of things,” he said, “but I won’t be blamed for your getting ill again. There, is that better?”

“I’m quite dry now. But you aren’t.” I put up a hand to the side of his neck, feeling the rivulets run over my fingers. He closed a hand over mine, his eyes dark and troubled.

“Eve…” he said.

Oh, the delight of hearing my given name pass his lips.

“I think you should take off your wet things,” I whispered. “You’ll catch your death.”

“Eve, this cannot…”

“Here, let me help you.” I pushed his sodden braces over his shoulders.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he said, agitated.

“I’m dealing with you,” I said. “In the way I have wanted to, ever since I met you. Please…just let me take care of you.”

He made to protest again, and my voice sharpened.

“Or I will run out into the rain and stand there in the thunder and lightning until my lungs collapse.”

“Don’t you threaten me, my girl, or you will see what you get,” he growled, hooking an arm around my waist and pulling me close, which performed the dual task of keeping his trousers some way up.

I pulled his shirt clear of his waistband and peeled the soaked fabric up from his taut abdomen.

“It is nothing I haven’t seen before,” I reminded him, pressing myself into his hard body. “The very first time I saw you, you were as naked as the day you were born.”

“And you shouldn’t have been looking,” he said hoarsely, but making no attempt to resist my unclothing of him.

“I could not help myself.”

He took over from me, throwing off the shirt and dropping it on to the floor, along with his undershirt.

In all the magnificence of his body, one blemish caught my eye. I put my fingers to a raised white scar on the side of his right arm.

“What happened to you here?” I asked, stroking it.

“I was shot,” he said, smiling at my shocked reaction. “The man aimed at my heart, but his hand shook so that he could not fire straight and the bullet grazed me here.” He took a breath, his eyes misting. “You know, after it happened, I felt such a great power about me as if I had performed some kind of miracle. I looked at that miserable creature, and I said, ‘You see, I cannot be ended’. And I truly believed it, at that moment. I really thought myself immortal.”

“You were lucky, that much is certain,” I said.

“My luck did not hold much longer,” he said. “I know now that I spoke false. I am not immortal, nor invincible.”

“But you are strong, and you are a man,” I said, reaching up to smooth his rain-slicked hair. My movement released his trousers, which fell then around his ankles. He stepped out of them, still in his long underwear. I pressed myself into him again and felt at the base of my belly a solid protrusion that made me blush. Yes, he was a man, and here was the proof.

“I am a beast,” he said, with a kind of agony in his voice that hurt me.

“Do not say so.” I shivered a little. “It is a little cold in here. Will you lie down with me on the blanket and hold me in your arms?”

He shut his eyes for a moment, then tugged at the blanket against the wall until it was spread on the floor. We sank down and sat together, still entwined. Now our faces were closer, and I rubbed my nose and cheek against his, begging mutely for more kisses.

“Eve, I am not what you think me,” he said, drawing back. “Do not cast me in this heroic role. It does not fit.”

“I cast you as nothing but the man whose arms I am in,” I said. “I want nothing from you but what you can give me, here and now.”

“God forgive me,” he said, and then we were kissing again. God did not reveal to us whether he forgave Jedediah his impulse, but I could see nothing to condemn in it.

He pulled me down to lie beside him. I explored his body with mine, wrapping my legs around his, moving my hands eagerly across his chest and back. For his own part, he seemed to be holding himself in check, but after some little time his hand drifted, outlining the shape of my breasts in my camisole, then coming to rest on my hip before sliding around to cup my buttocks. Our breath grew heavier and less manageable, and our skin began to heat, wet from more than the summer rain.

He broke off, panting and agitated.

“I will not be able to stop myself,” he warned.

“Then do not,” I said fervently.

“Eve, you don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what I could do to you…”

“You can do anything you like,” I said. “No, listen to me. You think I do not know what I am saying, but I do. I have spent years locked away with no crumb of human affection, except the hideous mockery of it offered to me by George Farren. He thinks this body will be his, along with my hand, but it never will. It will never be his, but I would like it to be yours. Even if only this once, I want to decide on my account what will be done to my body and by whom.”

His eyes were wild, staring into me as if daring me to mean what I said.

“It is ruin to an unmarried woman to…do this…”

I put my hand to my chemise, pulling it down to bare my breasts.

“Then ruin me,” I said. “Take what George Farren shall never have, and make it your own.”

He replied by rolling me on to my back and pressing his weight upon me, his mouth at mine, one hand on my breasts, another at my tailbone, unleashing himself as I had tempted him to.

_A man doesn’t need asking twice._ My mother’s contemptuous voice, when Joan had tried to make her believe that she had not lost her maidenhood to her sweetheart. _They are all lustful pigs, all of them._

But she was wrong. Jedediah had tried to stop himself, for my sake, and it had made me want him all the more. I cared nothing now for the mores of the world outside. That world had been nothing but cruel and hard. I cared only for the new life I had found through this man, and the new sensations and feelings he brought to me. I wanted nothing more than to heal and care for him, and to give him such pleasure as might be mine to bestow.

I arched against him, pressing that bulge of his into the shallow delta between my legs. He growled into my mouth, his hands at my breasts where he had done away with what remained of my camisole. His touch was heavy but tender, and I blossomed into it, showing him through my own caresses how eager I was for him to continue.

In the course of our heated embrace, he managed to divest us both of our remaining clothing so that we lay together naked, just like every pair of lovers since Adam and my namesake Eve. How natural and beautiful it seemed, how very far from the disgusting visions my mother had muttered of. I fitted so neatly into his larger frame; everything he did to me made me tremble with desire, and I appeared to have the same effect on him. Could it be wrong to give another soul such transporting delight? George Farren would say so. I could not agree with him.

Jedediah touched me in places I had tried all my life to ignore, to pretend non-existent, but now their existence was boldly proclaimed, in terms that made me moan and sigh. His fingers slid over my secret bumps and mounds, gathering mysterious emanations that helped them slip inside me. It was startling and unexpected, to find my most private place speared upon a man’s fingertip, but I made no protest. Indeed, I opened my legs wider, granting him easier access.

He unlocked me slowly and gently, his mouth at my breasts, my hands at his neck, until he looked up from his labours and held my eye.

“You are sure you want this?”

I could have been honest and told him that I was not entirely sure what ‘this’ meant. I was aware, of course, that he referred to the mysterious way in which men ‘knew’ women in the Bible, but of what it actually consisted I could not have said. But I could say that I wanted him to give me that knowledge, and so I did.

“I want you,” I said. “I want you in every way possible.”

“Christ,” he muttered, his face tightening into a grimace. “If you had come to me before…” He opened them again. “You know it will likely hurt you?”

Again, this was something I was vaguely aware of, without having an idea of the mechanics.

“I will bear any pain for you,” I said, then, quickly, “But will it hurt much?”

He kissed me then, on my lips and my forehead.

“A little, and for a short time,” he said. “But you will bleed.”

“I can bear a little blood,” I said. “If you can. Can you?”

He smiled painfully. “Oh, I think I can,” he said.


	9. Chapter 9

Yes, there was pain. Yes, there was blood. But to me, all of it was precious, because it belonged to that one transcendent experience of my life – the joining of myself and Jedediah, transforming us from two souls to one flesh.

At first, it felt unnatural and strange, to have this foreign entity pushing inside me. I feared that he had made a mistake and would do me harm, and I tried to signal my anxieties with my body and my breath. But he was tender and reassuring and he calmed me with kisses and caresses, so that my panic turned to pure sensation and I was ready to continue.

Then came the pain, through which he held me close, but at the end of it was the pleasure of having him deep inside me, and the knowledge that no other man could now take this part of me. It was done, and I was now ruined in the eyes of a world for which I cared nothing.

I clung to him tight, settling myself into this new and absorbing sensation.

“How is that?” he asked me, his face over mine, his fingers smoothing my hair. “Are you hurt?”

“A little,” I said. “That is, it feels… I can’t describe it. But I like this pain, because it is you who gives it.”

“Oh my girl,” he whispered, and I realised with astonishment that there were tears in his eyes. “You are something else, for sure.”

I held his face and lured his lips down to mine. As we kissed, his tears wetted my cheeks. I wiped them away from both of us.

“Is this now done?” I asked. “I hope not. I could lie like this for hours.”

“You would get your wish, if I had my way,” he answered. “You are sure you are not in too much pain?”

“Nothing like.”

He kissed me again, and set to rocking his hips against mine, so that he moved inside me, just a small movement, but enough that I felt the friction of it. As he worked, so my pain became blunter until it was no more than a dull throb, insignificant in comparison to the pleasure that built from the base of my belly.

My heavy breaths turned to sighs. I loved everything about this, from the solid crush of his weight on top of me to the clutch of his hand in my hair. His face was set, almost grim. He gritted his teeth as his movements grew and strengthened into bolder thrusts. I felt the stretch of it, and the soreness, but I also felt the spark of something that would encompass and swallow me when it came to fruition. I felt it between my legs and inside me, and I twisted and turned underneath him, teasing it out.

Jedediah put one hand between us, reaching down to rub that slippery button betwixt my thighs.

“This should…feel…good,” he said, his voice somewhat strangulated with the mix of effort and pleasure.

He was correct in his surmise. It felt better than good. It felt sublime.

I flung my arms to my sides and let out a howl of surprise at the enormous wave that powered through my body, reaching every extremity and taking possession of my very blood and bones. I arched into him, utterly undone, utterly consumed, utterly his.

He kissed my face all over, taking pride in what he had wrought.

“Yes, that’s it, girl, you give me all you’ve got,” he said, his voice cracked and thick.

Sapped and shaking, I lay underneath him, watching his face. It formed itself into the most dramatic expressions, twitching, stretching, appearing at the last to be in pain. His eyes went wide and glassy and gave the appearance of one who looked upon a horrifying apparition. I quite feared for him, especially when his gaze was coupled with a series of fierce and primitive grunts as he thrust with force then halted, as deep inside me as he could seat himself.

“Ah,” he breathed at last, shutting his eyes for a moment. The tension I felt across his whole body was released and he laid his fevered head on my shoulder. “I did not mean to…”

I kissed his salty forehead.

“What? You did not mean to what?”

“I intended to pull out before…” He swallowed, then kissed me. “Well, it is too late now. We are in the lap of the gods.”

I did not know what he meant by this, but I was too enervated to pursue it. I wanted only to lie there with him, conscious of the bond between us, giving and taking the sweet kindnesses we owed each other.

“Was that what you thought it would be?” he asked, running an idle fingertip over the mounds of my breasts.

“I had no thought of what it might be,” I said. “It was entirely unexpected, and entirely wonderful.”

That seemed to amuse him.

“That’s a decent review,” he said. “You were a surprise as well.”

“I hope, not an unpleasant one.”

He laughed, kissing me.

“Far from it, Featherweight. Very far from it.”

“Then how did I surprise you?”

“You seemed to enjoy it more than most girls on their first time.”

“You have done this with many?”

“Well, perhaps a few,” he said, grimacing a little. “In the main, there is complaining. But you take to it like a natural.”

I thought about this.

“Does that make me wicked?” I wondered.

He held me tighter.

“If you’re wicked, then I’m the devil himself,” he said.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” I teased, tweaking a whisker, but his face grew sombre.

“No more should I,” he said. “But Jedediah Shine is done with being cast down to the outer darkness. The time has come for him to rise again.”

“Do you really feel well enough to go back into the world?”

He kissed the tip of my nose.

“Thanks to you, my love, I think I do. But first let me rest, since it is on your account I am feeling so spent.”

He drifted with surprising speed into slumber while I lay with my head on his shoulder, listening both to the beating of his heart and the thunder above. The rain made a great racket on the roof, but Jedediah was not disturbed. How unlike himself he looked in sleep; a man at peace, a younger man, removed from all care.

At length I grew restless, and I rose and seated myself at his little makeshift desk, thinking to read one of his police bulletins for diversion. There was one already open, and the front page story was clearly of interest to him, for it contained a great deal of underlining and incomprehensible annotation.

The story concerned the dreadful murder of a police inspector in Whitechapel, found with human bite marks to his body. Apparently this horrible death reawakened the possibility that a man had been wrongly accused of earlier, similar attacks. I wondered if it was a case Jedediah had worked on himself. Perhaps he had arrested the unfortunate falsely-accused who now lay in his grave.

Allied with this story was another, of another Whitechapel police inspector who was implicated in another horrific crime and remained unapprehended, in the company of an American police surgeon. The inspector’s name was Reid, which sounded unaccountably familiar. I had to think hard for a few minutes before recalling it spoken with angry contempt by Jedediah in the rowing boat. He was the man with ‘drawing room manners’ who could not fathom the hard early life of his fellow inspector.

Well, drawing room manners were fine in their way, but surely not when they belonged to a man who had chained up a fellow human and left him to perish in an underground dungeon of sorts. His claims to respectability appeared to be at an end.

As I sat perusing these sensational matters, I became aware that I was…well, I could only call it _leaking_ …on to the chair. When I looked down at myself, my thighs were crusted in dried blood and some flaky white stuff, while a pinkish residue lay upon the wooden seat.

Mortified, I grabbed the nearest thing to hand and wiped away the mess. I realised afterwards, with some dismay, that the stain was now transferred to my camisole.

Well, the damage was done. I had nothing to wear, and my clothes were likely to be sodden and unwearable, hanging on those branches as they were. My only hope was that the sun might come out and dry them later on. It meant I was confined to this boating shed for some hours longer, but that was no hardship to me.

I sat back down, gasping a little at the stab of residual pain below as I made contact with the seat. It was a welcome and sweet pain to me, though, for it spoke of Jedediah’s possession of me. I smiled dreamily, even as I looked down at the columns of hair-raising newsprint.

“What are you about?”

Jedediah’s voice was sleepily querulous. He rose to his knees behind me and came to bend over the back of my chair, frowning down at my reading material.

“That kind of thing interest you, does it?”

I twisted to look up at him.

“Not as a rule. But there are not many ways to pass the time in here, so…”

“You seemed to find a very good way of passing the time before,” he said, fixing his lips to my neck and sucking in a way that made me feel quite limp.

“That required…oh…your participation…mmm.”

He tilted my face to his to give my lips the same treatment.

“Look at you,” he whispered, “all naked and mussed up, sitting at my desk. I wish I’d had you down at the station.”

_Perhaps you will. Please give me some hope of a future together,_ I begged silently. But I could not say it. I was too fearful that he would give me none.

“Did you work on this case?” I asked him, as he perched his splendidly unclad body on the edge of the desk beside the open paper.

“No,” he said, glancing down at it. “Whitechapel was not my beat, or it would have been a safer place. But it bordered it, so I was well aware of what happened there.”

“But you knew these men? The dead man and the fugitives?”

He looked down bleakly at their portraits for some time.

“This man,” he said, jabbing the face of the murder victim, “put me in here.”

“Really?” I gasped, crouching forward to take a closer look at the late Inspector Bennet Drake. He did not have the face of a vicious man. He looked world-weary and his eyes were sad, his physiognomy framed by neatly trimmed fair hair and a pointed beard. Only the strong chin gave the face real force. “He looks so…”

“Do not be deceived. He nearly killed me. Often enough, I have wished that he did. It was not the first time we met in the ring. I had defeated him on all the other occasions. But this time was different. This time there was a grudge…and this man fuelled it…”

His finger alighted this time on the portrait of Inspector Edmund Reid.

This man looked so upright and steadfast that it was difficult to believe him capable of wrong-doing. He had the large face of a large man, but there was gentleness in it, and again, such sadness in his eyes.

“I will never more square up to Bennet Drake in this life, but Reid…ah, Reid. I think we will meet again.”

Jedediah’s voice was quiet, but his face had transformed into a mask of such intensity that, in that moment, I feared him.

“And I have you to thank for it,” he said, appearing to see me again after I had disappeared from his view. “You have given me this reinvigoration. I wrote yesterday to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, offering my services in the capture of this man. If I can have the doctors declare me fit…”

“But you are not fit, not yet,” I said, suddenly dreadfully afraid of what the future held. “Your balance…and your headaches…”

“Nothing I can’t overcome,” he said. He took my hands and kissed them. “Thank you, Eve. Thank you for bringing me back.”

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

We lay in each other’s arms until the thunder cleared and the hammering on the boathouse roof ceased. I listened, rapt, to his tales of life in Hong Kong, transported thence into a heady atmosphere of tea ceremonies and ruthless crime gangs.

When he tired of talking, we fell into further embraces, exploring the many various ways in which we could give each other pleasure. There were such things done with tongues and teeth and fingers as I had never dreamed of, and he taught me them all. I supposed he had learned some of these practices in China, for I was sure no English woman could countenance such exotic modes of intimacy. But when I said so, he laughed, and said it was a long time since he had encountered such innocence.

I certainly did not feel innocent as we moved into a second coupling, regardless of the persistent throbbing I still felt in my nether regions. I could not get enough of him, and nothing mattered but my endless need for satiation.

Awaking from exhausted slumber, we found that the storm had passed.

“They will be looking for you,” said Jedediah, frowning with heavy eyes at his fob watch. “It is near four o’clock.”

“So late?” I should have felt the burn of anxiety, but I felt only a luxurious heaviness in my body and mind, and I did not move one inch from my recumbent position on the blanket. “Do they never look for you?”

“They know well enough not to by now,” he said. “They leave me to it.”

“I have nothing to wear,” I said, yawning. “My undergarments are in a sorry state, and my dress and petticoats lie on a branch, soaked quite through, I should think. There is nothing to be done until they are dry.”

“All the same, we should try and avoid discovery. If they send out a search party, they might find us, and I would prefer that this place remain known only to you and me.”

I saw the sense of this and, sighing, pulled on my undergarments. The stain on my camisole had dried into an unsightly brownish blotch, and I blushed to think that Jedediah saw it. He dressed also, into his still-damp clothes and together we left in search of my skirts.

“How different everything is after a storm,” I remarked, as we made our way through thick, wet undergrowth. The rich, sweet smell of the earth permeated the air. I enjoyed the way fat drops of water fell from the overhanging leaves on to my bare shoulders and arms, though I did not enjoy the scratch of the brambles on that watered skin. “The world has changed.”

And indeed it had, in a more profound way than simple weather conditions could account for.

“This world never changes,” said Jedediah, and there was weariness in his tone that touched me. “But sometimes it surprises you.”

He reached for my hand as we stepped out into the clearing we had used for our meetings.

“Sometimes,” he said softly, “it gives you a gift.”

We sat on the biggest tree stump, me on his lap, and kissed away the time we thought it might take for the sun to work its magic on my clothes.

I wanted to ask him if we could be together, in the world outside this charmed place, but I did not possess the strength to accept a negative answer, so my questions remained inside me. Instead, I drew deeply from the well of his presence, wanting to remember always the exact feel of him at every point of our connection.

It was while we were thus entwined that the matron came upon us, my wet clothes folded over her arm.

“They are here!”

Her approach had been near noiseless, or perhaps it had been drowned out by our throaty sighs of pleasure, lost in the ocean depths of kissing. At any rate, neither of us had been conscious of another soul anywhere in the vicinity.

My legs weakened and his arms tightened around me as he looked up and stared fearlessly back at the horrified woman.

“What on earth…?” She stalked closer, her eyes popping. In her wake, another of the nurses hastened into the clearing, summoned by the matron’s voice.

“Oh!” She put her hand over her mouth.

“Do not look, sister, they are not fit to be seen.” She came to a halt before us, folding her arms majestically. “Mr Shine, we shall speak of this later. For now, I must inform you that you have a visitor, a Mr Dove. He is waiting for you in the library.”

Jedediah removed me from his lap.

“Keep your pecker up, Featherweight, don’t let ‘em grind you down,” he whispered to me, before picking up his walking cane and abandoning me to my fate.

“My clothes…were wet,” I said lamely, looking from the matron to the sister, trying to cover the stain on my camisole with jittery hands.

“And so you took them off? In front of…that man!” Matron shook her head so that I feared her cap might fly off into the bushes. “As for your comportment with him…suffice it to say that you will both be packing your bags this evening. But for now, we must get you into the house before this damp kills you. I’ve never had to bury a patient yet, and I don’t intend to start now. Come.”

*

Later that evening, filling my trunk with my few belongings, I was visited by Daisy.

“Oh, it is true,” she said with dismay, leaning on the door she had just shut behind her. “And you are leaving.”

“I am afraid so,” I said, giving her a watery smile. I was very tired, and I ached between every bodily extremity. “They will not let me stay.”

“And did they really find you…?” She looked at me as one might a famous highway robber, a mixture of horror and admiration.

“I do not know what you have heard, but there is another implicated in my disgrace, yes.”

“But _Mr Shine_ , truly,” she blurted. “I cannot credit it. Did he attack you? Because if so, you must tell Matron. It is wrong that you should suffer for his wrongdoing.”

“He did not attack me,” I said.

She stared at me some more, then came down to join me on my knees on the floor, folding the final garments before locking them away ready for my cab in the morning.

“Are you and he, then…?” she asked tentatively.

I was not sure what it was she asked.

“I cannot tell you,” I said. “I scarcely know myself. In all probability, we shall leave this place and never see one another again.”

This pronouncement, bravely made, aroused all the same such a storm of desolation in my heart that I had to steady myself and clench my fists.

“And you don’t care about that?” whispered Daisy, clearly aware of my distress.

“It does not matter whether I care or not,” I said. “None of it matters.”

“But then, has he no feelings for you? I thought, when he intervened with that man in the rose garden, that he must have. He wouldn’t have done that for anyone else.”

“Do you think so?” I clung to her words like a drowning woman to wreckage.

“If you want him, then I hope so,” she said, and we embraced, my tears falling on to her starched bosom.

*

The next morning, after breakfast in my room, a porter came to take my trunk downstairs. I sat on it in the vestibule, awaiting my cab with a dull ache in my heart and every other part of me that organ serviced.

Whether Jedediah remained here or had left with the mysterious Mr Dove, I did not know, and it did not seem that anybody was going to tell me. Various nurses and servants eyed me as they crossed the hall, curious but dispassionate. I burned beneath their knowing gazes. I was the fallen woman whose notoriety would fuel their tea time gossip for many a day to come.

The sound of the cab creaking up on the gravel outside pierced me like darts. I could not leave here like this. Was there no word at all from Jedediah, not even a goodbye?

But the porters lifted my trunk and carried it down the stairs, and I had no recourse but to follow them. I felt as if I walked to my death, for the thought of re-entering my mother’s house filled me only with choking dread.

The cabman jumped down from his box and opened the door. I climbed inside and clamped my hands to my mouth, for sitting there, grinning broadly and gripping his walking stick, was Jedediah.

“Oh, it is you,” I said, half-laughing and half-crying with the delightful shock of it.

“I had my cab wait at the rank until your booking was called,” he said. “I did not want you to think I had left without…oh, now, Featherweight, no tears. There is nothing to cry about.”

But he took me, sighing and rolling his eyes, and held me close to him until my discomposure abated and I could look through clear eyes at him and the cab and the countryside rolling past us.

“We will go to Forest Gate,” he said, smoothing down my hair, “and see that you are made comfortable there.”

I no longer needed comfort, but I was unwilling to withdraw from his arms. How safe I felt there, amidst the uncertainties of my life.

“And what will you do?” I asked. “Will you stay with me? I wish you would.”

I felt his sigh, his chest rising and falling against my cheek, and steeled myself against the reply.

“For the time being, I must take lodgings in Whitechapel,” he said.

“In Whitechapel? But why?”

“My visitor yesterday – Mr Dove – has offered me a commission. The death of Bennet Drake, and the disgrace of Reid, leave a vacancy at the Leman Street station. I am to fill it.”

A strange gloating in his tone caused me to regard him closely as he spoke.

“You are to fill the vacancy immediately? As Inspector? But how can you, when you are not yet well enough?”

“I am well enough,” he insisted, with enough anger in his tone to warn me off pursuing the matter. “There is a quack I know in Limehouse will sign me fit to work and that is where I go once I have you settled.”

“So you will live in Whitechapel,” I said sadly.

“For the time being,” he said. “I will be devoted to my duties, my dear, for such time as it takes to get Reid on his knees before me. After that, my life will be my own. Can you wait that long for me?”

“Of course,” I said, my heart picking up speed. “But I hope this Reid will not prove elusive.”

“Do not fear, I will drag him from whatever nest of vermin he inhabits.” He made a throaty sound of satisfaction. “Leman Street,” he said. “Where I once spent time in the cells. For a man who understands justice, this is almost too perfect.” He shut his eyes, seemingly enraptured, then drew me to him for a hungry kiss. “You will see, my love,” he said. “All will be well. Jedediah Shine’s time is come.”


	11. Chapter 11

Overgrown hedgerows and golden wheatfields turned soon enough to the ring of villages that skirted London. Through Wanstead we drove, and Snaresbrook, and before long we were in the wide suburban streets of Forest Gate.

Jedediah’s sturdy arm around me gave me enough strength to ward off the cloak of fear that threatened to stifle me as we drew close to my mother’s house, but when we passed Farren’s church I had to put my hand to my mouth, nausea overcoming me.

“I wish,” I said joltingly, shrinking closer to him. “I wish there was somewhere else I could go. These streets have no happy associations for me.”

“Your mother’s house is yours now, surely,” said Jedediah. “You can sell up and move whenever it suits you.”

“I suppose so.”

“You should make an appointment with a lawyer, sooner rather than later,” he said. “Find out what’s what. I suppose the old bird left a will?”

“The old bird,” I repeated, faintly scandalised at his jocular disrespect.

“God rest her soul,” he said with exaggerated piety that made me elbow him in the rib.

“I suppose she did. I have no idea. It was never spoken of in my hearing.”

“Well, there’ll be papers in the house somewhere, I should hope. This is it, is it? Handsome place.”

It was an unexceptional two-storey town house in a long terrace. To me, it was a prison. But I made no reply to Jedediah’s words, stepping out on to the pavement while the cabbie hauled my trunk to the front door.

“You will come in with me?” I said to Jedediah, almost in a whisper, for my sense of dread had returned at full force. “I do not think I could go in there alone…”

Jedediah instructed the cabbie to remove his own belongings, and paid the fare.

“Thank you,” I said, as the cab creaked off.

He put his hand under my elbow. “Bear up and be brave,” he advised. “I suppose you’ve got a key for the door, or shall I have to break in?”

“Oh, no need for that.” I produced the key from my reticule.

“Just as well. My housebreaking skills ain’t what they once were.”

He grinned, a little ghoulishly.

“I thought you were the force of law in this city,” I said, opening the door.

“Like I told you,” he said, “you’ve got to know ‘em to catch ‘em. Well, here we are.”

The passage was dim and smelled of damp. Nobody had been in here since my removal to the hospital, just a week or so after my mother’s death. I had fallen ill on the day of her funeral. People had assumed at first that it was the shock of grief. How little they understood.

I looked into each of the downstairs rooms, while Jedediah hauled the luggage into the hallway. Each room had a dismal, shut up air. Dust lay thick on every surface and in the scullery mice had nested.

“You need a char to come and give this place the onceover,” said Jedediah, when I returned to the hall. “I know a few. Leave it with me.”

“You are so good,” I said. “I just look at it all and despair.”

“And we’ll fix you up with a nursemaid,” he added. “You need company.”

I looked at him gratefully. “Indeed, I do,” I said. But I had been hoping he might provide it. “Let me show you…”

I went up the stairs, and he followed me, slowly, his hand on the bannister to prevent loss of balance.

I took him first into the front bedroom.

“My mother’s deathbed,” I said, looking at the stripped down mattress on its iron frame.

Jedediah, ignoring this, went over to her dresser and began opening and closing drawers.

“If there’s any legal paperwork,” he said, “it might be in here.”

He pulled at one and found it locked.

“This one, I fancy,” he said, tapping at it. “There must be a key somewhere.”

“Oh, no doubt,” I said. “I will look for it later. Come away.”

I left the room and went into the back bedroom. From the doorway, I surveyed the four walls that had been the outer limits of my world, save on Sundays, when the church became its adjunct. The wallpaper’s pattern of faded pink roses and twining stalks made me feel sick. I turned away, my hand over my mouth.

Jedediah stood behind me. He put his hands over my shoulders.

“I cannot go in there,” I said, half-choking. “I cannot ever go in there again. Please don’t ask me to…”

“Why would I?” he said, his fingers working on the knots in my neck. “There is no need for it. Be calm, my dear. This is not your prison now. It is your property, and you are a free woman. Do with it what you wish.”

“Free,” I repeated in a whisper, leaning back against his wonderful solidity.

“But you will need funds,” he reminded me. “See to the lawyering before you do anything else.”

“I need you to do my thinking for me,” I told him. “I seem incapable of it for the present.”

“This is a brave thing you are doing,” he said. He kissed my forehead. “But I really must be off. I have an appointment to keep, and some further business to attend to on the way.”

“Oh, please, don’t leave me,” I blurted. “I cannot be in here alone.”

He sighed.

“Look for the keys to that drawer,” he instructed. “And when you have found them, get a cab to Lewis’s commercial lodging house on Commercial Road. Wait for me there.” He took a handful of coins from his pocket and pressed them into my hand, then left me alone on that fearful landing.

I went back into my mother’s room and set to seeking out that key, finding it eventually in a jewellery box. Inside the drawer, as Jedediah had surmised, were a quantity of legal papers. The solicitor’s address was a local one. I would make an appointment with him the very next day.

My sense of accomplishment did something to override the emotional disturbances that troubled my mind. Yes, I would sell this house, and move somewhere else. Would I live there alone? Oh, how I hoped not. Happy with my work, but exhausted by the rigours of my recent life, I went downstairs and fell asleep in an armchair for several hours.

I was putting on my hat, ready to hail a cab and go to Whitechapel, when I was surprised by a visitor. Opening the door, I found Mrs Barrie, a church friend of my mother’s, on the front stoop.

“It _is_ you,” she exclaimed. “I saw the blinds had been raised and… So you are quite well again? And how are you, dear, without your poor mother? You must be quite forlorn. But we at the church will rally round, you may be sure.”

“Oh…Mrs Barrie. I’m afraid I was just on my way out…”

“You might be able to answer a very urgent question for us, dear,” she continued as if I had not spoken.

“Oh, I don’t think…”

“Is Mr Farren here? Do you know his whereabouts?”

I stiffened, my ears roaring.

“I have not seen him,” I said faintly. “I do not think he knows I am here.”

This gave me another very good reason, if reason were needed, to vacate these premises and conceal myself in Whitechapel.

“Then I wonder what can have happened to him? I went to the church, with the ladies of the brass polishing committee, expecting him to come and unlock the doors for us, but he did not. When we went to find him, his housekeeper told us that he had left and would not be returning! You must know something of this, as his intended? No?”

“I assure you,” I said, my heart bumping hard against my ribs, “I know nothing of this. He left suddenly? And said he would not come back?”

“His housekeeper spoke of a visitor. A man, bearded with a walking cane. Now, who could that be? I know of no such man, do you?”

I let my breath settle before answering.

“Oh, no, I could not say. Mrs Barrie, I really must be going. I have an appointment I must keep.”

“But we are all so eager to see you again, Miss Carlton. We have all been praying for your recovery and God has been good. Will you be in church on Sunday?”

I was on the street, heading for the high road before her voice faded away.

I reached Lewis’s lodging house at dusk. It was a respectable enough establishment, and I was relieved to be told that Jedediah was there already, in the rooms he had taken on the first floor, for I had been disquieted by some of the scenes I had observed from the cab window. Whitechapel’s reputation seemed well-earned, to say the least.

“Oh, I am so glad you are here,” I said, ushered in to a decently furnished sitting room.

“Eve,” he said, rising from the desk he had been working at and taking me into his arms. “Did you find your key?”

“Yes. I will go to see the lawyer tomorrow. How did you fare with the doctor?”

“He signed me fit. I shall be at Leman Street within the week.”

“Did he examine you?”

“He examined the purse I gave him, which was all I asked.”

“Jedediah! Your health…”

“My health is good enough for what I have in mind, and that is all that matters. I don’t want to hear any more on the subject.”

I gave him a reproachful look, to which he was impervious.

“You went to see Mr Farren,” I said, once I had worn my reproachful look out.

“Did I, by Jove?”

“You know that you did. A very anxious matron of the church came and asked me if I knew where he was gone. Mention was made of a bearded visitor with a walking cane.”

“Bearded men with walking canes are ten a penny,” he said, but there was a self-satisfied glint in his eye. “As for Mr Farren, don’t you fret about him. I shouldn’t wonder if he hasn’t found a new mission in life, a long way from Forest Gate.”

I laid my cheek against his waistcoat while a ghost of dread that had inhabited my body for years and years passed out of it and dissolved in the ether. I was free of my life’s most hateful obligations, all of them, all gone, forever.

“I am so lucky to have met you,” I said.

“There’s not many that have said so,” he replied, cupping my face and tilting it up to his. “I hope I never give you cause to take those words back.”

“Will you let me stay tonight? Please, I cannot sleep alone in that house…”

He bent his head to kiss me.

“You can stay here for now,” he said. “But Lewis won’t have it for more than a night. Likes to tell himself he keeps a respectable house, does Lewis. I shall find a place of my own before long.”

“I shall sell my mother’s house. Perhaps…”

“Hush, hush, Evie, girl. You think too far ahead. For now, let us just…”

Another kiss descended, a silencer, a stopper-up of my over-eager mouth. We stood in that embrace until he had to put out a hand and hold the back of a chair for support.

“This is best continued in a more horizontal position,” he whispered, drawing me away into the adjoining room, which contained a large brass bed. “Come to my bed, Featherweight.”

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

The springs in his mattress were creaky, and I feared every other occupant of the house must hear them and know what we were about, but Jedediah simply laughed off my anxieties and pinned me down tight.

“Do you care what they think of us?” he whispered, between a rainstorm of kisses. “They don’t care what we think of them.”

“But your landlord,” I objected, yelping a little as his beard tickled my breasts, his mouth exploring lower.

“He ain’t my landlord. He’s a lodging house manager and he wants the two shillings I gave him for the night, plus the extra I slipped him on your behalf. He knows me. He won’t say a word about it, you may trust me on that.”

“I do trust you,” I said, sighing a little beneath his stimulations. “You are the only person I can trust in this world.”

“Well, that’s a sorry state of affairs,” he said, growling slightly as his mouth found a pair of lips situated much lower on my body and gave them attention just as fulsome as that given to their higher counterparts. “But if you have no further objection, my lady, I should like to save the chat for later.”

I had no further objection. The extraordinary excitement he brought to my body and blood with his tongue made sure of that.

We tumbled through the evening, twisting the bedsheets into tempestuous disorder, urging our imperfect bodies to greater feats of stamina and strength than I thought them capable.

Darkness was falling, and I was astride my Jedediah, joined with him in a slower, less frantic repeat of our earlier coupling, when he pushed my face from him and clutched at the side of his head, his right eye twitching furiously.

“Oh, Jedediah, what is wrong?”

I dismounted and knelt beside him as he writhed in pain.

“The drawer,” he managed to speak hoarsely through his spasms.  “Top drawer…syringe…give to me…”

I rattled it open and found in there a great many medicine bottles and pill boxes, but amongst them all, in a long velvet-lined case, lay the syringe to which he referred.

I gave it to him with grave misgivings – I had never heard of a physic that required self-administration in this way – and watched as he slapped and pinched at his forearm with vicious determination, until a vein rose to prominence, and he injected it with the brown liquid within the syringe.

Immediately, he seemed to find relief, his eyes rolling back in his head as he reclined with an exhalation that must have emanated from the very marrow of his bones.

“What is that? Jedediah? Are you better?”

“Mmm, my dear,” he sighed, the words coming out deep and slow. “Much…oh much. Let me rest now.”

I lay beside him, watching for any signs of further pain, or unconsciousness. I had not seen him suffer this grievously before, although he had evinced signs of headache on several occasions by the lake.

Oh, the lake. If only we were back there now, in that strange idyll, far from life.

Here, life was all too present, from the evening hubbub outside the open sash to the fumes blowing in from the baked potato stand on the street corner. And amidst it all, my beloved, lying insensate on his bed, clearly very much sicker than he had given me to understand.

He drifted soon into sleep, but I could not join him. I looked in his drawer and found laudanum, morphia, and cocaine pills, among other strong painkillers. Surely a man of lesser strength would have been felled by the combined potency of this pharmacopeia before now.

In the drawer, I also found another thing – an old framed photograph of another man, and yet it was still him. This man was younger and handsome and his bare upper torso was that of a Greek god. He held aloft a golden cup. An inscription along the bottom proclaimed it to be the Lafone Cup, won in 1889. Such a relatively short time ago – how he had changed since that day of glory, his face more than anything. He had aged twenty years in the space of five.

I wondered what might have been if I had met that other, younger man with the fine moustache and the undimmed eyes. But I had the strongest feeling that the answer to that was: nothing. A man like that would have no interest in such a poor scrap of a thing as me. It was only now that he was in decline that I became visible to him.

He awoke while I still held the picture in my hand.

“What’s that you’ve got?” he mumbled, squinting at me.

“This man is you?” I said, showing him the photograph.

“Ah.” He shut his eyes again. “Was.”

I put the picture down and seized his hand.

“Jedediah, are you feeling well now? You frightened me… What was that stuff you injected? Was it prescribed to you when you saw the doctor earlier?”

He grunted and hid his face in his arm.

“Let a man come to first before you fire at him,” he complained.

“I’m sorry. But I have been so worried about you.”

“You’ve no cause to be,” he muttered, but he made an effort to raise his head and look at me. “I’ve no use for a nursemaid. I prefer your interest in my body to be the other kind.”

I cracked a watery smile. “It is,” I told him. “It still is. But I want to know that body will be available to me for as long as possible.”

He pulled me close to him.

“It will be, Evie, you can count on that. These headaches are to be expected – when a man is as badly beaten about the skull as I was by Bennet Drake, a full recovery is rare indeed. I have what I need to control them.”

“That stuff in the syringe – was it prescribed by the man you saw earlier?”

He struggled into a sitting position, looking over to the drawer where it was kept.

“I must cook up another dose,” he muttered. “In case it should be needed later.” He scowled at my unswerving gaze. “No, girl, no English doctor prescribes this. It’s a Chinese remedy, found nowhere else in this city but in Limehouse, by the docks. Comes from the same plant as your common-or-garden laudanum, so you needn’t give me that face. There is nothing dangerous in it.”

“It seems much more powerful than laudanum. I am afraid it might have some damaging long-term effect.”

“My dear, I would drink the dregs of the Fleet Ditch if it would do anything to dull this pain when it strikes.”

“Then surely you are not well enough to work.”

He rolled his eyes. “Last time I looked, you weren’t a doctor, nor the commissioner of police for H Division, so you can keep your medical opinion to yourself.”

“But…”

He turned on me a look of such ferocious warning that I had no recourse but to drop the subject. All the same, my fears would not be overcome by his bullish confidence.

“I fear for you, that is all,” I said, turning my face from him. “These streets are so wild.”

“They will be somewhat less so, with my oversight,” he said. “Count on it.”

He was detained in meetings with police officials all that day, and I went to see my lawyer. I returned to my mother’s house with a heavy heart, but it was lightened in full measure when I saw the figure who sat on the doorstep with a battered suitcase by her side.

“Why, Daisy! It is you!” I could not quite run yet, but I hastened along the pavement to greet her.

“Miss Carlton,” she said, beaming. “I thought you must have moved away, I’ve been waiting that long for you.”

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea… I’m afraid I have no milk for tea. But you have not come for a visit?”

I eyed the suitcase.

“Why, no, didn’t he tell you?” She laughed at my perplexity.

“Didn’t who tell me what?”

“Mr Shine. He came to see me before you left the convalescent home. Offered me twice what they were paying me, to act as your nurse. I can’t tell you how glad I am to be away from that matron and her sour face.”

“Mr Shine is responsible for this?” Truly, he was like a benevolent angel, touching my life with blessings. “Oh, then, come in, do. I cannot promise that we will be living here for long, for I have given my lawyer instructions to put the place up for sale. But it will be so much more bearable with you for company.”

She unpacked and went to fetch milk and some other necessaries, then joined me in the dusty parlour for tea.

“So,” she said archly, once she had regaled me with tales of the aftermath of my dramatic departure from the convalescent home, “you have been all the talk of the day room, Miss.” She paused. “You and Mr Shine.”

“I am sure,” I said, blushingly aware of a sweet ache between my thighs that bespoke the truth of all the gossip. Sympathetic as I was sure Daisy was to the cause of true love, I could not be completely frank with her. She would certainly be shocked, and might even feel that she would have to relinquish her post with me.

“And might we expect a gentleman caller here from time to time, madam?” She tried to sound like a society lady, the effort falling endearingly flat in her broad Lancashire brogue.

“I am not sure I know any gentlemen,” I said. “But there may be a caller of the masculine persuasion, on occasion.”

“The masculine persuasion, on occasion,” she echoed, hooting with laughter. “You sound like a song from Gilbert and Sullivan.”

I joined in her amusement, but grew quickly sober.

“I fear for him, Daisy,” I said, grateful to have this listening ear for the concerns that nagged at me, and which Jedediah would not countenance. “He is going back to work within a few days, and I am sure he is not well enough.”

“Back to work?” Daisy frowned. “You mean, police work?”

“That is what I mean. He has been given charge of a police station, in Whitechapel. The environs are fearfully rough. I cannot see that it will be good for his health, when his headaches give him such agony.”

“No,” said Daisy, pondering. “I wonder that any doctor has signed him fit.”

“So do I.” I chewed my lip. “I am afraid the doctor he saw may not be entirely reputable.”

She put down her teacup and put her hand on mine.

“You care for him very much, don’t you?”

I nodded, unable to meet her eye.

“He has changed me,” I said. “When I am with him, I forget the poor creature I was and become somebody new.”

“Well,” said Daisy. “That sounds serious.”

“I wish I felt that I offered him anything in return.”

“I am sure you do. He was such a shell of a man, before he knew you. You have given him the will to go back into the world. He did not have that before.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really do think so.”

*

He did not visit that evening, and it was as well, for Daisy and I – well, mostly Daisy, if I am honest – worked for many hours at putting the house into good order. Daisy dusted and scrubbed, while I sat and polished the brass and silver, and my mother’s hundreds of appalling china ornaments.

“These are all for the market at Petticoat Lane,” I told Daisy, wrapping each in newspaper and dropping them into a box.

My old life was falling away, being shed like the skin of a snake, and with it went the old Eve.

“Tomorrow,” I told Daisy, “my real life begins.”

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

Daisy, by happy happenstance, was as good a cook as she was a nurse.

Breakfasting on poached eggs with bacon rashers, and strong coffee from the stand at the corner, my thoughts turned naturally to Jedediah and when I might hope to see him next.

For all I knew, it might be never. He had no intention of staying long at the rooming house in Commercial Road, and may already have found new accommodation. He would begin work very soon, severely limiting his availability to me.

And perhaps, at root, he did not want to be available to me. After all, no promises had been made, no vows taken.

What if, in making my thoughts on his state of health clear, I had given offence and he had decided to have no more to do with me? What if he now felt that he had discharged a duty to me and had earned freedom from the burden? What if I had been a mere distraction, an amusement to take the edge off the tedium of convalescent life?

My appetite for the food waned and I put down my cutlery.

“Ooh, Miss, you should eat it all,” said Daisy, busy with her own plate and the morning newspaper. “You need your strength. Have you seen this, about the missing police inspector? They think he might be hiding in the sewers.”

“Heaven help Mr Shine, then, if he has to go down there in pursuit,” I said.

Daisy put aside her paper.

“He is on your mind, isn’t he? I know that faraway look.”

I shook my head. “I have too much to think about. Disposing of this house and finding another is quite enough to be going on with.”

The clop of horse’s hooves slowed and came to a halt outside. Daisy stood to peer through the front window.

“A cab,” she said. “Oh! It is Mr Shine.”

I almost fell off my chair in my haste to gather my wrap around me.

“Oh, I am not dressed.”

“Shall I get the door?”

“No, no, let me… Perhaps you could…put the kettle on?”

I hastened along the passage to the front door and opened it in such a way as to hide my state of undress, so that only my head was visible.

Jedediah smiled at me quizzically, passing into the house.

“Why ain’t you dressed?” he said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

He hooked an arm around me and kissed me without quarter until I feared Daisy would be scandalised and resign her post.

“Jedediah,” I gasped, freed from his tyrannical embrace. “Daisy…”

“She is here, then?”

“Yes, and thank you so much for what you have done. It means a great deal to me.”

He put his lips to my ear. “Can you send her out for an hour or so?”

My cheeks burned, knowing what he suggested.

“I wish I could but I do not think…”

He sighed.

“Cab’s waiting for us anyway,” he said. “Go and get dressed, quick as you can. I am taking you on a visit.”

“A visit? To whom?”

“Get dressed and you’ll see, won’t you? Chop chop.”

He sent me upstairs with a smack to my rump that made me squeal with indignation. Daisy must surely be getting a very interesting sense of the state of affairs, even from the next room.

Habiting myself with all due speed, I hurried downstairs and told Daisy she had the rest of the day off.

“This position gets harder and harder,” she said with a wink. “I’m fair worn out with it all. Go on, enjoy your day out, Miss.”

Jedediah awaited me inside the hansom.

“Where is it we are going?” I asked eagerly, but he would not tell me.

“You know what curiosity killed,” he said.

“But I am not a cat.”

“You purr enough when I tickle the right spot.”

“Oh, stop it. You are shameless.”

“I make no apology for it. Shame does nothing but hold a man back in life.” He looked through the window as we turned off Forest Lane and headed towards Wanstead Flats. We crossed the heath, thriving in the dry climate we had lately enjoyed - although the ponds were evaporating into cracked mud - until we reached Bush Wood, and there the hansom stopped.

“This is where we are going?” I asked, a little perplexed as Jedediah handed me out of the cab. There was nobody to visit here, unless you counted the abundant bird life in the trees.

“A staging post on the journey,” said Jedediah, linking his arm with mine and striking out into the woodland. The cabman sat down on the road verge and lit his pipe, apparently content to pass the time until we returned.

Jedediah guided me off the path and into the trees until we were out of sight of the road, at which point he threw down his walking cane and pushed me against the nearest tree trunk, trapping me in place with his weight and his hungry mouth.

I clasped my hands about his neck and gave back all the passion I had, mixing it with all he gave to me.

“This was not part of my original plan,” he growled, releasing my lips for a brief moment, “but if you will answer the door to me half-dressed, you can’t expect me to keep my hands off you.”

I could only hold on tight as he tugged at my bodice and wrenched up my skirts, shoving a hot and hasty hand into my drawers. We kissed and clawed at each other like beasts of the forest, intent only on our drive to join together. He hoisted me higher against the trunk, so I had to wrap my legs around him. Now I was at the perfect height for him to drive himself into me, and he did so, after freeing himself from his trousers. I cried out and he covered my mouth with his, taking my cry deep into his own throat.

The discomfort of the tree and the contortions of my limbs were forgotten in our animal need for one another, and the determined thrust towards pleasure.

Afterwards, we were both soaked with sweat and I was quite covered in shavings from the tree bark. I stood, panting, leaning against the trunk, wiping my brow and face with my handkerchief, patting down my flurried skirts. Jedediah sat beside me, against the trunk, smoking with an air of profound satisfaction.

“Can’t beat a bit of al fresco,” he said, stubbing his cheroot out on a tuft of grass. “Your bed might have been more comfortable, all the same.”

“Jedediah,” I said tentatively, sinking down to sit next to him. “I cannot but wonder…what does the future hold for us?”

He frowned, pulling up some weeds by the roots. “I haven’t been in the habit of considering a future for some time,” he said. “The one I thought I had was taken away from me by Bennet Drake. In its place I’ve got this wrecked head and ravaged body and just enough wits left to hunt down a certain Inspector Reid.”

“But for us?” I prompted timidly.

“Eve, I must be frank with you. I cannot make you any promises. I start my work at H Division tomorrow, and until Reid is run to earth, I will give my all to that.”

“Then…shall I not see you…?”

My clear dismay softened him. He took my hand and stroked my knuckles.

“I will not say so. I might be able to find time, the odd night. But if I don’t, I ask that you won’t hold it against me. When this work is done, when Reid is in the cell I once occupied…when his neck is in the noose… then I will come back for you. If you will wait for me.”

“I will, of course I will. I will always wait for you.”

He kissed the top of my head.

“That is much more than I deserve,” he said. “But I hope your wait will not be long.”

“I hope so too.”

He took my elbow and hauled me to my feet after him.

“We must go. Cabman’ll be leaving us here to walk the rest of the way.”

“The rest of the way where?”

He tapped the side of his nose.

“You’ll see.”

I had to hope our final destination, wherever it might be, was not a refined sort of place. I felt extremely unkempt and there were dark patches under the arms of my dress. Additionally, I was sure I must _smell_ rather interesting.

The cab cleared the other side of the wood and rolled further, into environs I scarcely knew.

Eventually, we drove past a high brick wall, and entered a long driveway through a gate which had to be opened to us. In the distance, a handsome grey stone house stood, but its windows, when we came closer, were barred and had a forbidding, blank look.

I clutched at Jedediah’s sleeve, an enormous realisation overtaking me.

“Oh, oh, is this…?”

He put his arm around my shoulder, trying to still my sudden quaking. I could scarcely move to leave the cab and he had to lift me out and support me up the steps towards the door.

Jedediah banged on it with the blunt end of his walking stick. It was swiftly answered by a small uniformed woman with a tight bun.

“Are you expected, sir, madam?”

“Never mind expected,” he said. “I am here on police business. Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine, H Division.” He flashed a warrant card and the woman seemed to quiver with sudden purpose. “I need one of your patients.”

“Wait here, I will fetch Dr Muncaster.”

“Is he in charge?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then that’s the man I need to see.”

“Jedediah,” I said faintly. “I wish you had warned me.”

He led me to a chair and let me sink down into it. I sat there, struggling to catch my breath, while we waited for Dr Muncaster, who arrived in a fluster, peering haughtily through half-moon spectacles.

“Inspector Shine?” he said. “You want to take one of my patients? Do you mean, to discharge them?”

“That is what I mean. I’ve had intelligence that the said patient was incarcerated here under false pretences and that she is, in fact, as sane as you or I, Doctor.”

“Well, that would be a most unusual and irregular…”

“Oh, come now, you know as well as I do that these private bins are used to dump inconvenient relatives in before they make a scandal. Half of them shouldn’t be here, and the other half would probably be better off somewhere else. Joan Carlton, Doctor. Produce her for me, if you please.”

“Joan Carlton? She has been here ten years, at least…”

“Ten years too long, then. Bring her down, or I shall consider some further investigation of these premises. When did somebody last take a look at your books?”

“Nurse,” said Dr Muncaster, nodding curtly at the bun-haired woman, who scuttled off through a double door. “Inspector Shine, discharge of this patient would be against my better professional judgement. Miss Carlton is under constant heavy sedation for her nerves and…”

“If we find that she is better off here, we’ll be sure to bring her straight back,” said Jedediah, with the least reassuring smile I had ever seen.

“She has been stubbornly resistant to all our attempts to…ah, here she is.”

I leapt from my chair.

Joan stood before me, but such a thin, pinched, glassy-eyed version of her that I almost thought they had brought the wrong patient. She was barefoot in her white gown and her hair had not been brushed in perhaps months.

But her dry lips moved into something like a smile. Had she recognised me?

“Joan?” I said. “It’s me. It’s Eve. I’ve come to take you home.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

“Oh,” said Joan, and her voice was cracked, as if she had lain in a desert. “Is it you, Eve? Can it be? I remember you. I thought you had forgotten me.”

I held out my hands to her and she came hesitantly.

“They would not let me visit,” I said, tears falling rapidly from my eyes. “They locked me away, just as they did you. But now I am free, and I have come to take you home. Please, let me…”

I put my arms around her. She was stiff at first, but eventually she leant into me and laid her head on my shoulder.

“We have a cab waiting outside,” Jedediah reminded me.

My arm linked with Joan’s, I led her down the steps after Jedediah. The air was sweet and soft in this part of the country, and made everything seem a little unreal. I was really bringing my sister home – to my home, where I had dominion, and nothing to fear.

It was truly wonderful.

*

When Jedediah left us, he gave me no indication of when I would see him again. I clung to him before he walked through the door, wanting to leech the moments of every last drop of his presence.

“I will worry about you,” I said, my words catching in my throat. “Please, even if you cannot come, send word that you are well.”

“I will try,” he said. “Keep fighting, Featherweight. You’re a lot stronger than you look, girl.”

And then he was gone.

But I was not bereft. I had so much to keep me occupied that my days flew by. Joan came slowly but steadily back to herself, although the strangeness of freedom wore her out quickly and I had to be careful not to overstimulate her. I went out viewing houses and spent many afternoons with an accountant, reviewing our financial situation, which was sound. My mother, for all her faults, had been very careful with my father’s legacy and we had more than enough for two single women to live on, and pay a maid.

I began to take the Illustrated Police News, from which I learned that Jedediah’s pursuit of Inspector Reid did not go smoothly.

“Whatever is that?” Daisy asked at breakfast, peering over my shoulder at an artist’s impression of an incident on the steps of the Leman Street station. “Oh, is he naked? Oh! Crikey!”

“With a rose between his teeth,” I confirmed. “What a dreadful humiliation for the poor man. They suspect Inspector Reid and his coterie of being responsible for the outrage.”

“And that’s Mr Shine, there.”

“Yes, he has made it his mission to find those responsible.” I looked at the drawing which, crude as it was, had managed to capture a certain quality of brute determination in Jedediah’s features. It made me feel fluttery, when I recalled it applied to me.

“I hope he gets them soon.”

“So do I,” I sighed, putting the paper away from me. “I will go and wake Joan. She has been sleeping for hours.”

*

The report in the paper unsettled me. Jedediah had not sent word to me since he had taken up his post, and I feared very much that he was overworking himself.

On an evening in September when the hot spell had finally ended and the first mists of autumn crept in between the houses, I took a cab to Whitechapel.

At Leman Street, my courage failed me. I could not walk into the police station and ask to see him. The life around it was so very noisy, and noisome, that I felt like a foreigner, transplanted to a climate that could never suit me. Here, Jedediah was not my Jedediah, the lover who had come to me by the lake, but a different man, belonging to these streets. And yet I needed to see him, to know that all was well with him.

I stood, wrapped in a shawl, by a coffee stand across the cobbles and kept watch on the station. It was far from dull, watching the ebb and flow of life from those doors. Uniformed officers carted drunks, pickpockets, ne’er-do-wells, up and down the steps, some of them no more than children, others elderly and close to death. I wondered each time what they had done to merit their treatment, and I wondered if they would see my Jedediah, and stupidly I envied them, for I wanted nothing more, my heart full of longing for him.

At length, after much disorder and drunken staggering and volleys of abuse in the street before me, I saw a dark figure emerge from the side door, negotiating the slippery cobbles with a walking cane.

I stepped out from my hiding place and followed him around a corner and into a quieter street.

“Jedediah,” I said.

He turned and stared at me as if I were a spectre.

“What the bleedin’ blazes are you doing here?” he said, and there was no delight in his voice, only wrath.

“I…have been worried about you. You sent no word…”

“Well, here I am, I’m alive, aren’t I? Is that good enough for you? Now get yourself home before I have to put you in a cell for your own safety.”

“But Jedediah, please, can we not speak?”

“No, we cannot.”

A cab came thundering around the corner and he hailed it with his cane, the horse stopping short and neighing with alarm at the sudden violence of the action.

“Take this lady to Forest Gate,” Jedediah ordered the cabman, before turning to me. “Don’t _ever_ let me catch you on these streets again. Do you understand?”

I could only stare, my eyes blurred with tears.

“Do you understand?” he roared, and I nodded quickly, hurrying into the cab.

I wept like a bereft child all the way back to Forest Gate. There had been nothing of love, of kindness, even of affection in the way he had spoken to me. I had spent the evening building up fantasies of our reunion, of bringing a smile to his face, of spending precious hours in his arms. That was all shattered now, and with it my hopes for a future with him. His eyes had quite burned with anger. It had been as if he hated me.

On arriving home, I ignored Joan and Daisy, hailing me from the drawing room, and hastened upstairs to my bedroom, where I wept some more.

I was thoroughly red-eyed and my throat ached from sobbing when a knocking at the door interrupted my woe.

I sat up, listening as Daisy went down the passage to answer. We never had visitors at this hour – indeed, we very rarely had visitors at all.

“She’s in her room,” I heard Daisy say. “I’ll fetch her down, shall I? Oh!”

Whoever it was had taken exception to the suggestion and was now treading heavily, but not speedily, up the stairs. My heart beat madly and I rubbed my tear-stained face with my pillow and dashed to the mirror. Oh lord, what a fright I looked.

A fist hammered at my door.

“Who is there?” I asked.

“You know who,” said Jedediah. “Let me in, will you?”

I opened my bedroom door.

“I cannot let a man into my bedroom,” I whispered. “Joan and Daisy will think…”

“To hell with Joan and Daisy,” he said. “Let me in or else I’ll go home.”

I stood aside silently. He went and sat on the bed, took off his boots and settled himself back against my pillows, patting the vacant space at the side of him in what seemed more a command than an invitation.

“What are you…doing?” I asked, hesitating at first before going to sit beside him. The counterpane was soaked with tears; I wondered if he felt it.

He put his head on one side and looked at me, a long assessing look that made me both nervous and hopeful.

“You’ve been crying, girl,” he deduced.

“Do you wonder at it?”

“I have made a few girls cry in my time,” he said. “But I hoped you wouldn’t be one of them, I must admit.”

“Then perhaps if you were not so harsh…”

“You took me by surprise,” he said. “And I had no wish to see you on those streets. I stand by those words. They are not the place for you, Eve. By coming there and talking to me, you put yourself in danger.”

“It is not a pleasant place, that much is clear, but I was so anxious to see you.”

“I asked you,” he said, raising his voice a little, “if you would wait for me, and you said you would.”

“But if you had only sent word…”

“You said you would wait,” he repeated, so forcefully that I could not defend myself further. “Did you not?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I did.”

He sighed heavily.

“Eve, if I have given you the impression that there is some future for you with me, then I am sorry for it.”

My blood stood still in my veins.

“What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I mean that I have nothing to offer you. I am no longer young, I am not in good health and I spend every waking hour in discharge of my duty in the worst slums of this city. That is not what you need or deserve in a mate.”

“There is no other man for me but you, Jedediah,” I said urgently. “There could never be.”

“Cobblers,” he said, looking away from me. “You’ll meet some young fella with prospects and fine manners and you’ll live happily ever after with him. And even if you don’t, you’ve got money, you’ve got your sister, you’ve got your freedom. Use it. Make the most of it, girl.”

“I owe all of that to you.”

“I don’t want your gratitude. I live a life that doesn’t suit anybody but me. I ain’t about to change it, even for you, Featherweight. Perhaps if things were different…but they ain’t, and they can’t be, and so there it is.”

“After you have apprehended Reid…” I said. I was fighting for my life now; I had to land every punch where it mattered.

“After I have apprehended Reid, there will be another villain to chase, and then another. I had forgotten how it felt to be on those streets, pitting my wits against the flotsam and jetsam of this world. I had forgotten how it made my blood pump and my heart beat. It is my life, and what I live for, and that will never change.”

“But police inspectors have wives and families.”

“I cannot leave it at the door, Eve. I cannot be the terror of the streets by day and the jolly family man sitting by the hearth at night. That is not Jedediah Shine.”

“Then Jedediah Shine is a vile seducer and a cad!”

“Jedediah Shine is very likely both of those things,” he said, rising from the bed with the help of his walking cane. “And a few worse.”

“Jedediah Shine can go to hell!” I cried, throwing a pillow at his back.

He walked to the door and stood in its frame, looking down at my already tear-damp face.

“Jedediah Shine undoubtedly will,” he said, and he turned to leave.

“No,” I shouted, running out after him, hanging over the banisters as he descended the stairs with painful slowness. “You cannot leave like this. I will not allow it.”

At the bottom, he turned and looked up at me, and his eyes were less hardened.

“You’ve got spirit now,” he said. “I gave you that. Keep hold of it, girl.”

I waited until the door was closed behind him, then I sank to the floor and howled like a wounded animal. I thought my heart would burst open with the pain. Perhaps it did.

 


	15. Chapter 15

I trudged through the succeeding days, barely aware of my actions, or of anything much but the deep-seated pain that seemed to settle in my head and behind my ribs.

Daisy feared that I was heading for a relapse, and she made me rest a great deal, and drink hot beef tea until the sight of it sickened me. Then there was true sickness, and a fatigue the like of which I had never known. My lungs, however, did not fail me, and I had to conclude that whatever ailed me was not tuberculosis.

It was not until the doctor visited and asked me some strange questions and laid his hands upon my stomach that the true reason for my malaise became dreadfully apparent.

“You must not tell my sister or my nurse,” I told him, my fear causing the nausea to rise again. Watching me vomit into a basin, he promised to maintain his Hippocratic oath of secrecy. There was neither censure nor sympathy in his manner, merely a stony professionalism for which I was grateful.

“What does he think, Miss?” Daisy asked, popping her anxious head around the door once she had seen the doctor out. “He won’t tell me a thing.”

“There is no danger of a relapse,” I said. “It is simply…I am simply…Daisy, will you lay out some clothes for me? I must go out.”

“But Miss, you can’t, you’re not right.”

“I must,” I insisted, and Daisy saw my resolve and argued no more.

At Leman Street police station, the desk sergeant told me, with some reluctance, that Inspector Shine could be found taking lunch in a chop house around the corner.

“But don’t tell him I told you,” he called after me as I left. “Please?”

I nodded, intrigued by his apparent fear of Jedediah. This was a fear I now shared, for if I could have avoided this meeting, I most assuredly would have done. But he needed to know what had transpired, so I girded myself as best I could, standing outside the chop house and taking a quantity of my deepest breaths before pushing open the door.

I did not see him immediately, but then I noticed his walking cane propped up against a table and I knew he must be in the adjacent booth, with his back to me. He sat alone, brooding over a half-eaten plate and a glass of some dark ale.

“Oh, your hand!” I spoke the words before he was aware of my presence, shocked by the bloody grid of cuts on his knuckles.

He looked up at once and almost snarled with annoyance.

I refused to be cowed, slipping into the seat opposite him. I could not fail to observe that his physical appearance had slid further downhill. He looked half-mad, red-eyed and ravaged.

“I can’t be having this, girl,” he muttered. “I have told you what’s what, and I have nothing to add to it, so you may as well be on your way.”

“But there is something I have not told you,” I said. “Something you ought to know.”

He pushed his plate away angrily.

“Please, listen to me,” I said, losing courage by the second. It was difficult to mute my voice when my passions were running ever higher, but I managed to lower it to a whisper. “Jedediah, this morning I have seen a physician, and he has told me that I expect a child.”

He turned to fire-eyed stone, staring at me wordlessly until I could bear it no longer.

“Your child,” I added.

“I should bleedin’ well hope it _is_ mine,” he said at last.

There was another heavy silence.

“Are you sure?” he said.

I nodded. “I am sure.”

He sat back, and swigged at his ale.

“If you want to get rid of it,” he said, “I know someone who can do it for you. Save you having your life ruined. I’ll pay for it.”

“No,” I said, coughing in my haste to get this proposition off the table. “No, I don’t want that. I couldn’t do it.”

“Ah.” He sighed. “Thought you might see it that way.” He paused, looking for the answer in the congealing gravy on his plate. “Well, you must leave it with me,” he said at length. “Go home now and I’ll come and see you when I finish up at the station.”

“But will you?” I asked tentatively, afraid that this was merely a ploy to remove me.

“I promise you,” he said. “But this is not the time to discuss it. I have a hundred places I should be within the next half hour. Go home and wait for me. If I don’t come, you have my permission to march into Leman Street and call me all the names under the sun, in full hearing of all my men.”

I smiled weakly. This was almost the man I loved.

“I will do that,” I said. “You may count on it.”

“Tonight, then,” he said, reaching for his walking cane. “Go home now.”

I contrived, with enormous effort of wit and will, to get Daisy and Joan out of the house to play cards with a neighbour once we had eaten supper. Daisy had made gingerbread to settle my stomach and I gnawed on a piece as I sat in the bay window, looking out for any sign of a cab.

It was late when he arrived at the door; so late that I was dozing in the rocking chair. At the sound of the door being thumped, I jolted awake and checked the clock. So late! Surely Joan and Daisy must be coming back at any minute.

I ran to answer the door and let him in.

“I would have come earlier,” he said, following me into the parlour. “But I have been preoccupied.”

I offered him refreshment, which he turned down. We took seats across from one another.

“You’re pale,” he said. “You don’t look well. Are you taking care of yourself?”

“No worse than you are,” I said. “You are driving yourself too hard.”

“Never mind that. I am very near getting my man now, and there will be no rest for me until it is done and I have him. Then I might rest for as long as…” He twitched at the corners of his eyes and looked away. “As long as I have,” he said softly.

“I hope it may be soon,” I said.

“So do I. Well.” He leant forward and took a folded piece of paper from his inner pocket. “What do you think I have here?”

“I could not say.”

He unfolded it and held it up to my face. I saw a printed grid, containing our names and dates of birth and sundry other details, stamped with the crest of the local vestry.

“Oh, is that…?” I gasped.

“A special license,” he said. “Since you will insist on keeping this nipper, it seems to me the poor little perisher ought to have a name. So you and I have an assignation, my girl, tomorrow morning at nine on the steps of Christ Church Spitalfields. And it cost me something to arrange, let me tell you.”

I stared at the piece of paper.

“Is that…real?”

He rolled his eyes. “I might be a lot of low things, but I’m no forger.”

I raised my eyes to him, speechless.

“I haven’t had time to see about a ring,” he said. “So you’ll have to make do with this one, of mine. It used to fit my little finger, might suit yours…try it.”

He took my hand and slid a heavy gold ring, stamped all over with Chinese characters, on to my relevant finger. My hands shook so much that the task was not easy.

“There…a little bit big but…it’ll serve.” He took it off again and put it back in his pocket. “So, you’ve nothing to say to all this? You could put a man out of his misery. Are you in or out?”

I had thought myself quite desiccated from all the tears I had lately shed, but another one squeezed itself out, overspilling my lower eyelid before I could dash it from my eye.

“You want this?” I asked in a low voice. “Truly?”

“Are you trying to make me change my mind?”

“No, no, I am not. But I want you to…it is important to me…that you come to me willingly.”

He reached out and took my upper arm, pulling me close to him.

“The flesh is always willing when it comes to you, Featherweight,” he said softly. “It was my spirit that kept me away. I only thought of what was best for you, and in my mind, that was not me. But now…circumstances being what they are…” He laid a hand to my stomach, still flat of course at this early stage, but undoubtedly containing the seed of life.

“I could never look at another man,” I said, laying my own hand on his. I felt the raised ridges of the cuts on his skin and wondered how he had come by them.

“Well, now you will not have to,” he said, wrapping me into him so that my cheek rested against his shoulder. “Not until death do us part, anyway.”

The rush of memory and sensation this closeness evoked almost overcame me. Had he not been holding me so close, I would have fallen to the floor. That one afternoon of pure joy by the lake entered my consciousness once more, and I basked in it for as long as I was able.

“My sister will be home soon,” I said, “with Daisy.”

“You’ll need to bring them along tomorrow morning,” he said. “We need witnesses.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Tell them tomorrow,” he said, into my ear. “For I have a mind to take you upstairs.”

“Oh, Mr Shine,” I said, laughing through tears that lingered. “It is not traditional for a groom to visit his bride’s chamber on the eve of the wedding, I believe.”

“Hang traditional,” he said. “It’s not traditional for a groom to be out coppering on his wedding night either, but that’s where I shall be. So what do you say to moving the occasion forward? It’s only custom that says the ceremony must come before the consummation. We ain’t slaves to custom, are we?”

“We most certainly are not,” I said, beaming at him, rapt at the thought of having him in my bed with me tonight.

“Go on then. Get up them stairs, girl.”

In the bedroom, he took his time undressing me, interspersing every unlacing and shedding with quantities of kisses and caresses so that, by the time I stood before him in camisole and drawers, I was quite mad with lascivious fever.

“You are quite a gift to unwrap,” he breathed, pressing his lips to every inch of uncovered skin, sliding his hands up inside my camisole.

“You can unwrap me every night, from this day forward,” I said.

One hand breached the elastic of my drawers, moving downwards to cup one of my rear cheeks.

“That is a delightful thought,” he said. “Or perhaps I’d keep you naked. How would that be? Naked and ready for me on the bed when I got back in from a hard day’s work. I think I might insist on it.”

I whimpered with need as he moved his hand around to part my thighs and work at the bud inside them.

“I never thought of marriage in my life,” he said, “but the thought of all this belonging to me…mmm…I see the attraction now.”

“Sweet God,” I gasped as he rubbed and probed and built the wall of pleasure within me.

“Get on that bed,” he commanded, drawing his fingers away just as my body was ready to surrender to the inevitable storm. “I’m going to give it to you like it’s my last night on this Earth.”


	16. Chapter 16

In my bed, Jedediah was like a man possessed. He unleashed himself on my unresisting body like a demon fashioned especially for the purpose of ravishment, touching me in every sensitive part and setting me aflame.

For an hour, we made the bedsprings squeal along with our impassioned moans. After that, it was necessary to quieten ourselves, especially when Daisy knocked upon the door, asking with nervous uncertainty if I was quite all right.

“Oh, don’t come in,” I cried anxiously, while Jedediah held me tight, his hands clasped beneath my breasts, his lips attached to the pliant flesh of my neck. “I am quite well. Sleep is hard to come by tonight, that is all.”

Jedediah snorted into my skin. I pinched his thigh, wrapped about my hip. He tightened it in warning.

“I can make you some warm milk,” offered Daisy.

“No, no, please go to bed, Daisy. I will see you in the morning.”

“Well…if you’re sure…”

“Go and see to Joan; you know she still has those terrible nightmares. Good night now.”

I heard her slippered trudge along the landing.

“Warm milk,” said Jedediah, once Joan’s bedroom door was open and shut.

“Stop it! We must be quiet,” I whispered.

“I’ve got plenty of that, if you’re thirsty.”

“Oh, _stop_. You are horribly coarse at times.”

“Begging your Ladyship’s pardon. I would never seek to offend her Ladyship’s delicate little ears. May I ask if her Ladyship’s right honourable cunny might be ready for another bout with my hard cock yet?”

He did not tire until well into the early hours, when one of his headaches forced him to take a quantity of tablets and retire into the relief of sleep. I lay in his arms, exhausted and sore, my skin sticking to the sweat-soaked sheets, wondering if our married life would always be this vigorous.

Perhaps I could prevail on him to leave Leman Street, for the good of his health, and come away with me to some country retreat where we could bring up our child – our children, God willing –  in fresh and plentiful air. With my private income and his police pension, we would be comfortable enough. Joan could give a hand with the babies, and Daisy could live alongside us as something more than a servant – perhaps with a husband of her own to do the heavy work and the gardening.

The castle I built in the air grew ever more extravagant, with roses around the door and a swing seat under the bough of a great oak, but before I slipped into sleep I reflected that none of it mattered a jot, as long as this man slept beside me.

It could only have been two or three hours later that I was awoken by his kiss on my forehead.

“I’d better go, while it’s still dark,” he whispered. “Or there’ll be questions in this house you might not want to answer. Christ Church at nine, remember, and bring the girls.”

I watched his silhouette in the dark before dawn, dressing with difficulty. I lit the bedside candle for him, enjoying the sight of him pulling on his shirt and buttoning his waistcoat.

“Could’ve done with a few more hours of sleep,” he said, grimacing ruefully at his reflection in the dresser mirror. “But I wouldn’t change it.”

“Me neither,” I said, seeing my own reflection smile at him. “I think I shall be the tiredest bride that ever walked the aisle, though.”

He smiled back and picked up his coat.

“If you can walk at all,” he said with a wink, and then he was gone.

I arose, painfully and with a swimming head, an hour later, catching Daisy on her way down the stairs to light the kitchen range.

“Why, you’re up early, Miss,” she said. “Did you sleep at all? You look quite done in. Go back to bed and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”

“No, I can’t go back to bed. I need to make myself ready.”

“Ready?”

She paused at the foot of the stairs, waiting for me to catch up with her.

“Yes. You see, I have a very singular appointment this morning. And I need you and Joan to come with me.” I swallowed as she frowned in incomprehension. “To Christ Church in Spitalfields. Where I am to be married. To Mr Shine.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she screamed, waking Joan and bringing her to the kitchen where we all stood, laughing and crying and drinking tea until it became necessary for me to dress.

Of course, I had nothing in the way of bridal attire. My green silk dress was the only thing nearly appropriate. Put together with some jewellery and a white chiffon wrap of Joan’s from before she left, it would have to do. But Daisy did my hair quite beautifully, and she worked on my skin like an artist, banishing the dark circles beneath my eyes and hiding the hollows of my cheeks with careful rouging until I looked approximately bridal.

“It is such a hurry,” she said a hundred times. “Why is he in such a hurry?”

I had not thought to ask, and I was glad of the hurry, so I simply shook my head and laughed. When I considered it, I supposed it was so that we could pass the child off as a honeymoon baby, but I could hardly explain that to Daisy and Joan.

We set forth on an adventure, the three of us in a hansom cab, Joan singing hymns as if on a Sunday school charabanc trip.

On the steps of Christ Church, Jedediah awaited me. He stepped inside as soon as the cab drew up and we ascended the steps, Daisy and Joan on either side of me.

Joan rushed off to buy a bouquet from a flower seller on the steps and handed it to me just as I walked through the doors.

It was not perhaps the wedding a young girl dreams of, but Jedediah spoke his vows to me, and I to him, and he put the clunky Chinese-charactered ring on my finger, and we were man and wife. It was enough for me. It was more than I had dared to hope for.

We kissed on the steps, and then he said he had to go, for today was undoubtedly the day when Reid would come into his hands.

“When shall I expect you? Will you come to the house?”

“I can make no promises,” he said. “There is no knowing how this day will end.”

“I hope, with Reid in custody and you at home with me,” I said, squeezing his hands which were still entwined with mine.

“I will dream of it,” he said, looking away from me, at the milling crowds around the church.

I saw that I must let him go to his work, but suddenly I could not bear to. It was imperative that I keep him with me for as long as I possibly could.

“You will keep safe,” I entreated. “Please do not risk yourself. You have a wife and unborn child to think of now.”

His attention snapped back to me and he looked at me long and deep, as if seeing me anew.

“Eve,” he said. “When I am with you, I am a happy man.”

I smiled, my throat catching.

“I am so glad. After all you have done for me…”

He shook his head.

“I just wanted you to know that.” He took a breath, seeming to shake the emotional moment off him. “And now I really must go. Take care of yourself, my love. And…” He laid his hand on my stomach. “For me.”

He squeezed my fingers so hard I thought they would break, and kissed me once more, then he set off down the steps.

He didn’t look back.

It was the last time I ever saw him.


	17. Chapter 17

A steady drizzle fell on the graveyard as I threaded my way through the tombstones.

The day after the funeral – a bewildering affair involving a uniformed police choir and a number of eminent local figures – I felt more equal to the task of visiting Jedediah’s grave and laying the flowers I had shrunk from scattering at the time.

Indeed, I had spoken to none of the other mourners, for I knew none of them, and not a single one seemed to really care for Jedediah. For them, the funeral was a grim social event, one for rueful chuckling and shaking of heads and whisky-soaked reminiscences after the last sod was thrown. I had been the only woman there.

Arriving at the grave, freshly dug and without a headstone as yet, I knelt at its foot and unfolded the piece of paper I had read over time and again since that dreadful news had been delivered.

“ _My dear Eve_ ,” it said. “ _You are reading a letter from a dead man, for this will only come into your hands once I have departed this life. I only hope you have not taken the news too hard. You will have heard that I succumbed to a fatal overdose whilst partaking of the hospitality of an opium den. That is what I wish people to believe, for the truth would debar me from burial in consecrated ground, and I must have a decent grave for you and our child – and perhaps our grandchildren one day – to visit._

_But I will tell you – and only you – that I administered the overdose to myself, knowingly and with the intention of ending my life. You must not think, however, that I was suicidal or in any way despairing. On the contrary, I had everything to live for. What I did not have was the good health to sustain that life. The quack had lately diagnosed me with incurable tumour of the brain, and it was that lingering and painful death I sought to avoid._

_Therefore you should rejoice for me, my dear, for I have escaped that fate, and will never more suffer the agonies you yourself witnessed more than once._

_I do regret that I shall never know my son or daughter, and that we shall never meet again. You gave me the happiest hours of a life I thought ruined. I trust that you will take comfort in the child, when it is born, and raise them to think at least a little kindly of me._

_I fear that the time will come when you hear word of my past, and it will not flatter me. In that event I hope you will remember me as you knew me, as the man who cared for you and watched over you and was proud to be your husband, brief though our happiness was._

_Never give up the fight, my Featherweight._

_With all my love_

_Your Jedediah._ ”

“Thank you for your letter,” I said tentatively, looking around to make sure no other graveside visitor heard me speak. “You’ll be pleased to know that you are in a proper grave. Nobody suspected what you had really done. But I am glad you told me. I am very glad of it. If I had not known, I think this would be even harder than it already is. And it is very hard, my love.” My voice cracked and a tear spilled out.

“Because, as you say, our happiness was so short. And you did have everything to live for.”

I put my hand over my stomach, wishing I could feel a bump, or the kick of a tiny foot. But that day would come soon, even if it was not yet here.

“The child will come with me to visit you, as often as we can,” I said. “And we will never care what anybody says of you. We will know what you did for us. That can never be taken away.”

I watered the grave with my tears until I was quite parched behind my eyes.

When I looked up, another woman stood a little way off, gazing at the rectangular bump of earth that covered my love’s coffin.

“Did you know him?” I asked her, as she came closer.

“I had to make sure for myself that he was truly dead,” she said. “Although I read the death notice in the pages of my own newspaper, I could not bring myself to believe it.”

“You are a journalist?”

She put out an elegantly gloved hand.

“Rachel Castello. Are you…related to him in some way?”

I did not want to tell a journalist.

“I knew him slightly,” I said.

“And slightly was much the best way to know him,” said Rachel with a nervous laugh. “That man has haunted my nightmares. Now that I have seen his grave for myself, perhaps his shadow will depart from above me.”

“You had cause to fear him?”

“Indeed.” She shook her head, her eyes shut in some dire reminiscence.

I did not want to know what it was.

“He could be very intimidating,” I said softly. “I can understand why people might not want to incur his wrath. I suppose he took exception to something you wrote?”

Her laugh was sharp, a bark.

“’The full majesty of the wrath of Jedediah Shine’,” she said. “That was what he threatened me with. Can you imagine it?”

I shivered slightly, feeling him almost with me.

“I do not have to imagine it,” I said.

She linked her arm with mine.

“Then we have something in common,” she said. “Perhaps we should be friends. Come, let us find a good corner house and I will order us a pot of tea.”

I left the graveyard arm in arm with her, just as the sun came out from the clouds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think she'll be OK :). Thanks for reading x


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